


Mezame

by exAm



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Abuse, Amnesia, Dubious Consent, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, I give the death gods tons of powers because they are gods, M/M, Master/Pet, Memory Loss, Sex Toys, Sexual Coercion, Stockholm Syndrome, Torture, Transformation, Whipping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-29 18:43:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 36,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12091086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exAm/pseuds/exAm
Summary: Mezame (目醒め) means awaken in Japanese. Explicit Ryuk/Light, Non explicit breif L/Light.Summary: Light becomes a shinigami but not a useful one. Wildly possessive and randomly cruel - Ryuk takes big time advantage of the newly made creature.OrThat story where Ryuk has a good thing with Light Yagami, doubts it and ruins it all for both of them.





	1. Chapter 1

Light’s [bishounen shinigami form](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-76hw8AOrOVY/Us05PMzYBnI/AAAAAAAAADY/gn1LnOqijEs/s1600/tumblr_ma3pnc61G31rvbwaz.jpg) is based on the doujin circle ‘Balgus Rec’’s work called ‘Pieta’, an LawLight classic. It’s also one of the saddest things you’ll ever read; if you can even find it.  
  
"All hell, is gonna break loose//when you find out what I'm into." - [Demon Road, Yeasayer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgUD5ltRE1E)  
  
**\---------------------- Mezame - 目醒め-----------------**

It hadn't progressed like it usually did- Light's awakening into the fold.  
  


For other newborn shinigami, it always had always been a shedding of a previous identity. One's mortal form exchanged for a strange body like none other. An impenetrable, unbreakable and deadly body ironically specific to one’s former lifestyle. A fun-house mirror. A grinder. Bodies reborn with some symbolic emphasis on the flaws of one's character.   
  
  
Normally the older God ignored rebirth processes. Given their nature, they were far too depressing to watch play out.  


He'd learned this lesson the hard way once. He'd observed with misplaced excitement the rebirth of the cruel shinigami Nu, who'd been rumored to have run a panopticon prison of horrors during her mortal existence. She'd used her borrowed Death Note to draw out excruciatingly long deaths of prisoner after unlucky prisoner.  
  
  
She'd come back changed from her previously lovely slender multi-limbed form as a limbless cylindrical blob of mismatched eyes that could freeze her victims in place before executing a worser fate.  


He'd figured with respect to Light Yagami, he'd have to see whatever disgusting end result emerged from the cocoon then try to consider him a fully different being.  
  
  
Yet with Light he found his curiosity was too great. His nostalgia for the man too much of a draw. That he couldn't help himself but peak in every now and again.   
  
  
As weeks when by, he'd come to realize Light was regenerating as naked as the day he was born as - pretty much Light Yagami again - he'd hid him away in his makeshift cavern home at the edge of the shinigami realm fearful some passerby would take the opportunity to pull apart his unarmored flesh.  
  


He'd shoved a like-sized human skeleton in the corridor of the realm he'd found Light, so that any might come looking for what had become of 'Kira' would see it. Sometimes a rebirth failed entirely. He imagined Gook or Kindara carting off those bones like a prize.  
  
  
Ryuk had been bewildered by the turn of events. It seemed damnably cruel that the selfsame soft human body, easy to catch a chill or heatstroke in these unforgiving desert climes, was regenerating after Light’s violent death in the warehouse by the Tokyo bay.  
  
  
Ryuk had been the one to write the man’s name, no doubt. To all within earshot, this had supposedly been because the fun part of his watching Light's game as Kira had reached its inevitable stop-break conclusion.  
  
  
Only after he’d assessed that the man was going to die a painful death by bleeding out on a concrete floor then his soul would be stuck in a body without a working brain until intravenous support could no longer help. Suspecting after Light's brain death the Japanese government would have held his still breathing form and experimented on until him until he perished, as they had with all notable serial killers of the past 40 or so years.  
  
  
Sure enough, Light's body disappeared once the Japanese police had claimed it.  
  
  
That body never even reached a casket but that was okay because the real Light was gone. The important aspect of him was saved from being interned in a useless brain dead wheel.   
  
  
Ryuk would have never revealed to Nate River or any of those fools in the SPK or task force who had been watching Ryuk on the day the hope of their little world had died on the floor like a dog. Would have never told them that he’d simply made the choice to grant a mercy death to his former friend.  
  
  
It was best that the shinigami left those humans who would make their record of his existence. He wanted to leave them behind believing Light had suffered an ugly death related to his use of the Death Note.  
  
  
Ryuk hadn't wanted to get stuck haunting a sheep-haired albino boy without a personality, or whatever human they'd assign him to, were any of them to decide to use his extra note instead of burn it the way they had.  


The only changes Ryuk could see in Light’s emerging shinigami form were minimalistic to the point they were more ornamental than anything else.  
  
  
A set of short dark blood red talons replaced where his manicured fingernails used to be.  
  
  
There was some hardening of the skin too into an uneven sort of striped armor from his delicately structured hands up to the crooks of his arms. This made him appear as if he were wearing armored gloves. Then smoothing the wounds of where he’d been shot in the hand and arm shut, the place where his other gunshot wounds had once given him gaping entry and exist wounds, was gorgeous dark ruby red hardened skin.  
  
  
When Light sighed or yawned in his sleep, Ryuk could make out a very modest set of fangs; about the cutest things he'd seen in his immortal life. In fact, nothing the newborn had been gifted with during rebirth was the least bit fear-inspiring.  
  
  
Not for the creatures of this ruthless world, anyway. Light may as well have been reborn as a kitten with patched fur which read, “Kill me.” in the uneven, sloping geometry of the native shinigami language's runes.  
  
  
Ryuk had never much had feelings of attraction towards fellow shinigami, but humans... humans were altogether a different story for him.  
  
  
He was going to want to protect this new shinigami if this was all Light was going to change. They'd long been a vice for him; beautiful humans presented endless temptation. Until he'd had the luck of meeting Light he'd never really gotten to be around a beautiful creature like that. Light Yagami was far prettier than most women. Off-limits to even the briefest touch but for ten years within his fingertips' reach.   
  
  
He'd found the torment sweet enough to endure; he'd have endured it for the man's entire natural life but they hadn't been given that chance. There were good reasons a mortal's lifespan stopped mattering while holding the death note.  
  
  
He would let himself admit it, the man’s personality and inventive mind had totally enthralled him during the human's exciting short life. Though he knew better than to think he'd awake again as the same man; Ryuk wanted a part in Light's future whatever it may be.  
  
  
Light wouldn’t have his memories from his prior life; likely though, he would still be just as smart as he’d been when he'd died. He'd keep the ghosts of his idiosyncrasies.  
  
  
Ryuk impatiently waited for many days, antsy to meet this new version of Light he found ways to occupy himself.    
  
  
The bones of the infamous human who'd become a god to his kind by using their commonplace tool.  


When Light woke Ryuk gave him the option of a long, fluttering cotton scarf to keep him from catching chill in the harsh winds of their cold wind-ridden desert world of bones and the charred remains of trees.  
  
  
He had no solution for the coming summer heat, their realm being a land of extremes. He supposed he’d worry about that if Light's body even made it through their oppressively frigid winter.  
  
  
The man had been redressed into simple black woolen pants and a warm tight black long sleeve t-shirt once his skin had solidified.  
  
  
These were the warmest thing Ryuk could think to steal in a quick visit to the human world.  
  
  
He’d found merino wool and woven pants because Light Yagami had preferred these materials. Living a decade with someone, you got to know their preferences down to the smallest details.  
  
  
He’d also brought Light his signature watch pilfered from his physical body before it was cremated. It had been a gift from the human's father who Ryuk had come to respect and he thought he deserved some meaningful remnant of his former life.  
  
  
Here, in their realm, it wouldn't really do much. Time could not be understood here. Ryuk observed it race madly forward, then pace strangely backwards or stop and start again. But Light had loved that watch and since it was in Ryuk's power to give him, there it was on his wrist. 

“Hey now. I see you're up. Do ya remember anything?" He asked Light when the newborn creature was finally sitting up.  
  


“Hm?" And then frantically, as Light searched his mind for whatever was left of his recollections and what came back to him were only shadows, piecemeal feelings and unclear imagery, replied, “No...” And shook his head, “Only… echoes.”  
  


“Stay calm. It will come back to you.” Ryuk bald-faced lied to him. He felt unwilling to take further responsibility for freaking Light out when the man had just been reborn.   
  
  
Ryuk himself, hadn’t ever been human. He was one of a few remaining direct descendants of the shingami king but he'd once heard humans had the weakest ability of all mortal species to recall former lives when they were reborn as shinigami.  
  
  
There were only couple shinigami still alive who had been human once- and yes, their recollections of their prior human existences were weak at best. Justin Armonia Beyondormason, the so-called answer god of the shinigami world had once been a king of Macedonia.  
  
  
He’d opened up to Ryuk once over a glass of red wine, swirling the dark liquid in a crystal goblet and holding it to his skeleton nose to waft the air up as if he could smell anything. He had described his remaining human memories as troubling shadows upon his mind.  
  
  
Impressions on a canvas that shifted with every viewing so that he could never be certain he’d been looking at them the right way the first go round.  
  
  
Humans were the lowest of the low among the many mortal worlds judged by the gods of death. Though some had high intellect and, in Ryuk's opinion, they were some of the most alluring creatures to observe.  
  
  
They were guided by complex emotions which many of the death gods found amusing. In hell many demons portrayed themselves as human because they were one of the more attractive and even cute mortal species.  
  
  
But by year-harvesting standards for shinigami humans were of particularly low worth. Each living a mere 80 to 100 years when many mortal species lived 5 to 10 times as long.

“I’m sorry. Do you know me?" Light's brown eyes were milky with unshed tears from his all-encompassing confusion. A lump formed in his throat and Ryuk swallowed audibly. If Light were fully awake now; this current fragile form would maybe be as much as he were ever going to evolve.  
  
  
Oh Chaos, the other Shinigami were going to tear this pathetic thing apart unless Ryuk could find a convincing disguise or a shield for this weak body.  
  
  
He wasn’t certain how much longer he’d be able to hide Light from nosy passersby even in his own home unless he could get the former human to perfectly obey his advice. Going outside even once could get him killed.

  
  
“You at least should know that much, Light.” Ryuk started spitballing. He needed a good excuse for keeping Light inside away and hidden from everyone. “You’ve gained some new powers. They’ve caused you amnesia. You should stay here until memories start to come back to you. We inhabit a dangerous world but you are mine so I will keep you safe.”  
  
  
“Yours?” Light closed his eyes tight summoning the shadow of the barest hint of a memory. “Light is m..my name? And you’ve been protecting me?”He pauses, thinking hard on what little he can recall, “For a long time I feel you’ve been beside me. This is embarrassing. What was your name again?”  
  
  
Ryuk was relieved that his lie had found something solid in Light’s cotton candy brain to stick to, “Name’s Ryuk. You should really know that but I forgive ya.”  
  
  
His presence had often been the opposite of protection for the man when they’d spent time together on earth; he’d cheered on Light’s bad behavior because it was a thrilling show but mostly stayed out of his way. There had been a few times he’d helped the human if only so he could keep watching the dramatic one-man performance he’d kept putting on but Ryuk had given nothing major in terms of help or protection to him.  
  
  
“I hafta go for a couple hours but you gotta promise me something, Light-kun.”  
  
  
“What is it?”  
  
  
“You must not leave my home. In fact, stay in this room for now.”  
  
  
“Um. Where else I would go?”  
  
  
Ryuk coughed, there were many places Light could go. The realm was vast, beautifully barren of life but rich in scenery and each shinigami held a part of that vastness for themselves, "Nowhere but here. For now. Promise me you won't."   
  
  
"I won't. Not if you don't recommend it." Then, as if it were the worst thing to have happened to him yet, “I must be losing my mind, Ryuk. I can't remember anything... I can’t even remember the writing for my own name.”  
  
  
Ryuk guffawed at Light’s peculiarly specific concern. In his fragile state in this new world of desert and bones, he first wanted to remember how to write his own name?  
  
  
An ironic smile tugged the right side of the death god’s always smiling mouth too far up as he realized he could easily show the man the thing which he thought he most desired, “I think I wrote it down a few days back. Want to see it?”  
  
  
Light nodded innocently and weakly swung his legs off the side of the bed.  
  
  
Beyond Light's line of sight, Ryuk tore out the singular paper from his note where he’d written Light Yagami’s name.  
  
  
Then he handed it to the man. As Light held and examined it; he whispered gratefully, “Oh, that was it! Thank you.”  
  
  
Ryuk laughed and ruffled his hair affectionately, pleased that Light did not shy away from his touch, “That name brought you here to me. You shouldn't forget it again.”  
  
  
The newborn tilted his head in askance but Ryuk doesn’t say more so he folded the note into his woven pants pocket and carefully then tried to stand up.  
  
  
His newly generated legs shook as a huge tremor moved up his form; he fell forward but Ryuk jumped to catch him and tilted him back again from his shoulders, resting his other hand at the small of the man’s back for a firm hold on his body then gently placing him where he had previously already been in bed.  
  
  
It was hard touching the pretty creature at this moment even though the shinigami’s had been doing so all week. Suddenly the desire to tear into the younger shinigami had ripened from a latent desire.  
  
  
Ryuk had watched Light with a dozen partners by now but he’d never dared to let himself think of the man as being something he could have. One day, Ryuk knew, that because of Light's overuse of the note, he would become a colleague though. That had been a given. That the human would be cocooned in ash then emerge as a hideous monster like himself with a form particularly suited to Light’s duplicitous personality. But even that had never made him think they would be here. With him burning for this creature like this.  
  
  
“Who are you to me, why are you caring for me?” Light asked. “I can’t remember.”  
  
  
“You’ve kept me amused. I'd hate to lose such a reliable source of amusement.”  
  
  
“Is that it?” Light said looking suspicious. That is endearing because there would be fuck-all he could do at this point to verify his thoughts or inklings.  
  
  
Ryuk chuckled; what the former human didsn’t understand is that his mere facial expressions were of amusement to the older God. Ryuk really shouldn’t play with fire like this because if Light regained much more of his memory - than these flickers in the cave of his conveniently emptied mind - he’d come to hate him for toying with him so blatantly. And a nemesis in the realm would usually be a major inconvenience.... it's just, that Light wouldn't really make for a scary one.  
  
  
The former human would probably be dead soon anyway… Ryuk who had never been cautious about seizing opportunity choose to go for broke, “I promise you, you are amusing. You are also good in bed.”  
  
  
Light blushed hard. He searched Ryuk’s face for any hint of a lie and Ryuk being an excellent gambler, kept his pokerface, “I see.” He accepted it that quickly. So unlike himself before.  
  
  
As if of course that is what it was. Of course he traded sex for the much larger shinigami’s protection. For a beat, he slowly breathed, he bit at his right lip with his new fang, worrying the skin there, drawing a bit of unnaturally dark ruby red blood that Ryuk is half tempted to swoop down to lick away just to drive his assertion home.  
  
  
“We also have… some kind of job?… which made people upset?”  
  
  
“Upset? HA! You’ve never treated it like a job.” The god chuckled. “Also, trust me. Upsettin' others was never something you cared about before. Now would be a real bad time to start.”  
  
  
What a peculiar and near total misinterpretation of their time on earth. Ryuk shared something more illuminating still with a bit of honesty and dishonesty at the same time, “Our work has always been your passion.”  
  
  
“So what is it? ... Our work?” The younger shinigami tucked his unbrushed and unwashed auburn hair behind one ear. He looked uncharacteristically disheveled but Ryuk hadn’t been interested in washing him until he was fully formed and semi-coherent to his surroundings.  
  
  
“We keep mortal populations in check.” The shinigami replied clinically shrugging his shoulders speaking as if all creatures whose lives they used to gain the numbered years of their conditional immortality were like a fire ant infestation they’d been long stomping out.

“We shinigami have to kill lower level beings so that we may live. We have that mission for a good reason and we can live forever secure in that knowledge.”  
  


Light looked at him like nothing he is saying flows together.  
  
  
Light then had a light bulb moment, “You gave me these powers!"

There he was looking radiantly pleased that something had come to him with any clarity whatsoever.  
  
  
It’s almost sad for the small creature, how he’s using the shadows in his mind to justify their connection to one another. He’s not wrong about the powers. He’s far from being correct about their source though.  
  
  
Still, Ryuk can work with that, or within the related truths of those assumptions, “I granted some to you some simple power at first. You’ve earned new ones from Chaos. These powers are harder on your body so you should rest.”

———————-  
  
Ryuk went to tell the king his concerns about his new 'brother'. The king was supposed to be a neutral protector of all shinigami. He was not a very good one; but he was what they got.  
  
  
“The newborn was condemned unto a vulnerable form.” The king booms, his massive bulbous form shaking on the chains that hold him up in his throne room,“An incomplete transformation was granted. It will require he rest and find occasional sustenance. He overused the note like none on any planet before him. If you wish to keep him safe; you will have to personally attend to his safety as well as sustain him.”  
  
  
“I don’t want to keep him safe like a damn job, old man; but I am interested in possessing and keeping him. The death note manual has so many rules regarding possession and ownership, no more than one shinigami may possess a death note user at one time. Can a shinigami possess a weaker shinigami? Isn’t there some magic I can use?” He was the king's son after all. The lack of familial support he could count on him for wasn't much, but that was the way with demons.  
  
  
“All shinigami are free beings who push open the doors of death for mortals. We are only bound by the rules of the note. As equals, we are free to fuck, fight and kill amongst ourselves however we’d like.”  
  
  
“Then our new brother will surely die. There are only 13 of us remaining. Now 14. Do you honestly wish him dead? I don’t know another amongst us who will not despise him for him retainin' the comeliness of his mortal form. The rest will cull him.”  
  
  
"I did not put him in that form, but he is too weak for me to waste my attachments. It is a job. If you are willing to take on the trouble of keeping him safe, tell the others he is your servant based on a little known rule of the note. I suspect only Justin Armonia Beyondormason will know you are being dishonest but he never was much for public arguments and he’s good at making bribes and deals. In order to avoid jealousy of the other gods from boiling over into deadly rage you will keep the newborn hidden from view. No showing him off. As to the new God himself, there’s nothing stopping him from leaving your side should he realize your deception. Nothing I can offer to you to keep him there.”  
  
  
"Fine." Ryuk bristled and thought to himself that this visit had proved as useless as he'd expected. He might have to keep Light away from the rest of the realm until the end of time.  
  
  
Well, there were more difficult eternal tasks than this one.  
  
————————-  
  
Later in the month, feeling stronger, Light pat the bed where he was lying. A bed Ryuk had only recently cared about making inhabitable for sleeping as he was among the shinigami who couldn't close their eyes to rest; his eyelids long ago burned away as punishment for ignoring a rule. “I don’t remember much, but it is not as if we are strangers. If you’d like, master?”  
  
  
He loved hearing that title issuing from the full cupid's bow of the man's mouth. He'd asked Light to call him 'master' as soon as he was sure that Light truly believed he was his servant.  
  
  
Yes, yes, he **would** like. This job had some perks.

Light had always been a sexual being and to have that nature turned against him instead of him being able to use it for seduction. An advantage against the many humans who were weak to it. Ryuk - he’d never dared to imagine he could have access to this. And now that he could…  
  
  
Ryuk didn’t need any additional invitations or signs.  
  
  
  
The newborn shinigami gasped as the ancient God sat on the bed sidling up beside then him pulled him into his lap in such a way that Light was forced to straddle him.  
  
  
“Aren't ya afraid of me?” Ryuk asked, curious, tracing the length of man’s chin with one long black talon.  
  
  
“I don’t feel afraid. I feel safe with you.”  
  
  
  
“If you remembered who we were to each other; you might be intimidated.”

  
  
“Why, was I not any good at this?”  
  
  
  
That was adorable. It inspired Ryuk to praise him but he kept silent. The halfling was fishing for compliments and he shouldn't abide by it. Light’d been stripped down to the very basics of his personality - a beautiful creature who loved to be praised and admired by others.  
  
  
  
Light had, from the countless times Ryuk had seen, an almost preternatural knack for _this_. Ryuk remembered very well the way he would drop to his knees for the messy haired British detective. The way he’d make precise and gentle love to his fiance’s petite body to keep her from complaining. Or the way he’d bend Mikami over a table and fuck him roughly until he was calling out, ‘God.’ L, Mikami, Misa and a few forgettable others had died for the experience of having him. This time Light was not going to be in control because he didn’t know who he was or how desirable he was.

“I can fuck you." He said unromantically though inside he was enthralled with the brilliant eyes that greeted him this close, "Am I going to need to find a suitable answer to every existential crisis you have before I can do that?”   
  
  
Light blushed and shook his head definitively that he did not.  
  
  
"Then you want me? Ask for what it is you want."  
  
  
"I don't... quite know. But I..." Light lifted up his arms so Ryuk could pull his shirt off. "Undress me?"  
  
  
He obliged, and the desire in him grew darker as he revealed Light's fit, comparatively petite chest and toned arms.  
  
  
The fire in the background crackled and made odd patterns on his barely-changed and luminescent bared skin. The older shinigami wanted to mark his charge everywhere but even the wrong slip of his hand could send Light to the nothingness in Mu. His instinct was to ravage him without care or remorse but he'd fight that to keep him. He'd first he’d have to learn the limitations of Light’s incomplete shinigami form.  
  
  
"Is that all?" Ryuk said amused, leaning to lick an exposed nipple until it puckered then moved to the other while running his hands up and down his back.  
  
  
"No... ah, take it all off. Off me. And.... Off you."   
  
  
The death god reached down and pinched his ass through his pants. "Oh? Is that my job?"  
  
  
Light caught on fast and reached down to undo his silver belt buckle.

The death god was much better endowed than any human man. Light stared at his member as he freed it, transfixed. He bit back a desire to shove the man down onto it because though he’d love to see Light choke him down with any ounce of his natural grace. One day soon, if he played his cards right, he’d at least see him do a terrible job of blowing him.  
  
  
Maybe not tonight though. Tonight was for getting Light high on pleasure and hooked on him and sucking him off was going to be hard with such a small velvety mouth.  
  
  
Light yelped then moaned like a whore as Ryuk shoved the soft black pants and underwear down and pulled apart his ass cheeks. He rimmed the man’s anus until it was twitching then dug his lengthy tongue in as deeply as could making the former human go painfully hard.  
  
  
He brings Light, muffled screaming an intense completion into his massive black hand then licks the man’s come salaciously off his palm. The former human's whole body twitched in the afterglow of his intense orgasm around as Ryuk’s tongue reembedded in his tight ass just to treasure those post orgasmic shivers.  
  
  
By the time he withdrew, Light was still shakey but he was earnest to give back, “What about you? What can I…”  
  
  
Ryuk shook his head and pat his silky hair, “It takes a lot more than a short tickle to get me off, Light-o. You are still recovering and have no energy yet. Do as I’ve ordered you to and rest.”  
  
  
“I can’t believe I would ever forget feeling like that…” Light whispered sheepishly, sounding guilty.  
  
  
Ryuk laughed to himself and just wrapped Light in one of the furs. The newborn shinigami shouldn’t believe him at all. If he’d fucked Light on earth; the man would certainly be aware of it even as mere shadow. It would have been incredibly traumatizing to a human. He probably would have broken the man.  
  
  
He wondered if he could have done so without consequence of death, if he'd have taken him on Earth. Shinigami could only touch humans on earth who were death note users who had willingly touched them first. Inanimate objects were alright to touch but with a certain limit of objects a day. Otherwise shinigami were incorporeal in the mortal worlds.  
  
  
Light nuzzled into his chest feeling warmed by the furs on the bed and sleepy from the mild exertion. Ryuk thought that even if Light ever figured out he wasn’t really  _his to own_ by the time that moment came Ryuk would have had so much fun, “I’ve told you you’d amused me.”  
  
  
Light glanced them both in the dirty mirror Ryuk kept in his bedroom by door.  
  
  
‘You and I kill lower level beings. But... I don’t look the same as you.” Light examined his much smaller dark ruby red talons  
  
  
“Ah, don't feel bad. We're the same kind o' demon. No two shinigami ever look the same. You are of lower ranking but through hard work you can change your rank. Until you grow stronger I'll protect you. As your master I can only protect you if you let me protect you. Follow my advice. Stay with me.”  
  
  
"I understand. And I will." Light said, though Ryuk knew he has no frame of reference for what leaving their home would even mean.  
  
  
Then the half-shinigami paused, as if he'd been wondering something for some time, “Ryuk... Do you know why do I feel like I’ve lost something important to me all the time? It’s this strange longing. Like... I'm satisfied with your company but it feels like I lost something major. I just don't know what it is.”  
  
  
A loss? Ryuk wondered if Kira is still in this halfling's mind somewhere, mad with the loss of his would-be kingdom, “… I told you you’ve changed. You haven’t lost anything Light-o. These are new powers you have gained."  
  
  
"But I..."  
  
  
The larger god interrupted him, manipulated the conversation, "It’s all ya need to know. I’ve been kind to you because this is a confusing time, rebirth we call it. But you need to understand… you serve me and not the other way around. Stop asking so many questions or I may put your mouth to other use.”  
  
  
Light looked offended but quieted when large hands started to comfortingly massage his body.

A moratorium on constant questioning was also so the smart newborn shinigami didn’t suss out his deceit.  
  
  
For the first time in his existence Ryuk was going to have to research things and carefully plan out responses.  
  
He hated tedious work but the thought of Light being his willing partner was too perfect, too poetic of a fate for Kira for the older God not to do everything to lock him down as a pet for as long as he could.


	2. The Limitations of False Memory

There’s always that preternaturally long minute, from the very first second when Ryuk arrived home to right before he disabled the wards to enter. The minute he took before he swung the door open because he needed to get his bearings.  
  

 Just for a minute. To prepare to be unaffected that he is there.   
  


Waiting for him, right there. Real, warm, and shatteringly gorgeous and absolutely his.   
  


Light often waited for him in the main room of the cave. Nearly always, unless he was asleep in their bedroom. Occasionally with some new project to show him if he’s interested, which he is, in everything the young shinigami manages to create and do in spite of the heavy limitations Ryuk has placed on him both with and without his knowledge.  
  
  
Ryuk would flip through Light's note to make certain he was reaping years.  
  
  
Truly, the last thing they needed was Light passing to Mu from the most easily preventable cause of permanent death.  
  
  
Without ever having looked into the portals to the mortal worlds, Light showed no great understanding of how to administer an appropriate death to mortals.

Except for in careful calligraphic letters etching out a death in sleep to a children. He showed a great, odd mercy towards those youngest souls Ryuk expected him to reap.  
  
  
Ryuk figured it was the part that was still human in him. That heart that still pumped problematically thin blood; too easy to spill.  
  
  
When he saw the pictures Ryuk would draw of their young faces, he never let them suffer.  
  
  
Whatever else Light remembered or understood that was dangerous from the human world shows up in plain as day as writing in his note.

 

That, it turned out, wasn’t all that much.

  
Ryuk read, “sudden death by heart attack, dies in arms of lover or closest friend” for the umpteenth time this year and stonily ignored the potential source. He flipped through until he could find a laugh-worthy death, another one of Light's little acts of orchestrative genius involving unexpected elements.  
  
  
In strict contrast to his 'kira' persona and perhaps, on account of his boredom and relative isolation, deaths had started to involve entire paragraphs of detail.  
  
  
In many scenarios, Light tried to intertwine the destinies of complete strangers using their deaths as the string. Ryuk was far too amused at this new ‘Kira’ signature death. A decent number of doomed unrelated people had booked very strange trips to remote parts of their planets or walked into situations they had no business being in, with complete confidence, to strangle others until they crumbled in broad daylight.  
  
  
  
Usually in warehouses. But Ryuk held himself back from mentioning repeated elements, any unprocessed latent trauma in the former human was not wise for him to address.  
  
  
Ryuk had actually  to stop giving him the names of mortals on separate planets for this predilection of having victims meet and murder each other. And thus on the earth this strange form of psychosis had been fittingly named, "Glitter Mania".  A reference to Kira being rumored to have died in Japan thus the meaning of his psuedonym had widely been recognized as "to shine" rather than "killer."   
  
  
Sometimes, Ryuk coughed, he wished he could laugh about these things with the old Light. Then the halfling would take his shirt off and throw a pout his way and Ryuk would think, 'Who cares about Kira.' As he reindulged himself in the sultry beauty again.   
  
  
As for going out? Ryuk grew more paranoid, more possessive the longer he kept Light safe in his home. He didn't need to deal with their king potentially punishing him over not better reigning in his charge as a 'caretaker'.   
  
  
When Light wasn’t simply waiting for him with a bit of news or some small improvement to the home he'd wanted to show him, he's often at ease in one of Ryuk's chairs that are far too large for his body. But anytime he heard him from the hearth he ran for him, swinging himself up into the shinigami’s arms, with a huge smile in greeting. Warm small hands started searching for a weakness, as if looking for an opening to strike.  
  
  
Ryuk laughing, let the man have at him. Tiny ruby claws dug into Ryuk’s unfurled black wings and small fangs gnawed his neck never breaking the cord-like strength of Ryuk’s nearly unbreakable flesh.  
  


The tussling is a turn-on, making him growl, putting an incredible strain on him with how much he has to hold himself back.  
  
  
The full force of Ryuk’s desire could ruin the halfling so that sometimes, even though he wasn’t the least bit upset with Light, when he couldn't hold himself back quite enough his talons slipped, digging bright red lines into an otherwise perfect canvas of bronzed skin and made Light howl like an animal.  
  
  
Or razor teeth could tear into soft mouth flesh; opening the bottom of a lip or an inner cheek and spilling his blood, splatters all over their home.

Then dripping blood from swelling lips, bruised across his torso and ass in the shapes of Ryuk’s fingers, struggling silently against his pain with tears shining in the corners of his eyes… Light would still trustingly hang on to him and get his daily fuck in, never backing off to self treat, full to the hilt with him, until they've both reached their completion. Only then would he worry that some salve or potion might be found to stitch him back together.   
  
  
To Ryuk, Light was his dark angel rendered in stark relief, meant to be a fixture just for him, all the variety of cruelty he displayed in his former life towards partners is gone from him in this realm but his wit is still with him, thank Chaos.  
  
  
Light was something to watch too. More graceful now than in his human years. He moved in the candle light of their home catlike absolutely sure of himself. Cataloguing everything that was theirs.  
  
  
Scanning for something more, the same implacable ‘more’ that Ryuk would have to punish him for asking for.  
  
  
Ryuk had troublesome feelings for the halfling. He'd been letting too much go. Though all questioning that proved too revealing, he left hanging in the air or merely conceded to answer them cryptically.  
  
  
Light was looking up from his present of a DS after having beaten a level in Tetris, “Who was I before this? Why am I so different from you?”  
  
  
“How many times must I answer this, my pet.” He chided, as if he had ever fully answered that question to begin with.  
  
  
Light curled into his side in bed with his arms around his chest, using him as a bed warmer and ghosting kisses against his arm, “How did we originally meet? Could you tell me that story? Just that one.”  
  
  
Ryuk sighed, “At the beginning of your journey as a shinigami. Long ago. But I knew you were meant for me. You were special.” Like that answered the question, he could feel Light heat with frustration.  
  
  
Light stared at his reflection in the mirror, adjusting his ironed black clothing to have no visible wrinkles, “Who made me? Why am I weaker than you? How can I be stronger?”  
  
  
  
Ryuk replied, “Match me in bed first and I may let you spar and train with me to become stronger.”  
  
  
  
Light gripped his head like shaking it would do anything productive for his lost memory, “How can I regain my memories? Why aren’t they coming back to me?”  
  
  
  
Ryuk chuckled, “The past is painful anyhow, Light-o. Let it all go. We'll have _an entire eternity_ to make new memories.”  
  
  
  
Light whining over a warm meal from the human realm that Ryuk showed no interest in sharing with him, “Why have you been protecting me for this long? Aren’t you bored of me by now? You always talk about boredom like it’s the worst thing that could happen to you.”  
  
  
Ryuk let this one slide, “Funny. Heh. I don’t believe you could bore me if you tried.”  
  
  
Then a question just last week though earned him a beating, “Master why can’t I leave here with you? Are you not even strong enough to fight off the other shinigami? I bet you are. Just once. Please.”  
  
  
“Never ask me to leave until you are stronger. This is your home. It ain't exactly glamorous; but it's _what we have_.”  
  
  
And when he whined on anyway, the older shinigami found he must mete out some form of punishment because otherwise it did not cease.  
  
  
He doesn't hesitate anymore. He had at first until he realized the disobedience was not just annoying for him; it could mean Light's fast and pointless death should he run off on his own. Ryuk doled out lashes while listening to the ether.  
  
  
As a Death God he was very attuned to his calling, he could sense like ripples in the water the difference from this realm and where Mu lied as waterfall down into an unfathomable infinity. They stayed on the very shallow end together, he didn't bring his partner anywhere close to the precipice of death.  
  
  
There had been a worrisome hint of playfulness in Light’s eyes the last time he'd been beaten black and blue like that by him.  
  
  
Ryuk wondered, and not for the first time, if Light wasn't asking these trifling things for the difference in made in Ryuk’s demeanor towards him.  
  
  
The way it caused Ryuk to go from protector to violent captor. Light’s beautiful golden eyes positively sparkle with excitement sometimes when Ryuk slammed him against a wall.  
  
  
He's not sure it's an act of masochism either. Is he being too good to him?  
  
  
Maybe he's being paranoid but it seemed like Light, in his way, is trying to make his master lose control.  
  
  
That wasn't sustainable. Their power dynamic had to stay fixed.  
  
  
For the most part Light as a shinigami reminded Ryuk of the softer personality he'd once seen in the man when the death note was gone from his possession.  
  
  
A personality learned from his parents early on, performed with exactitude for the sake of fitting in. Loyal, moral, obedient and fierce as a guard dog.  
  
  
In this form, as needy as one, too.  
  
  
It was almost painful not to praise him when the way Light looked to him for reassurance is intoxicating.  
  
  
“Was it good for you?” Light asked earnestly after sex one night. Speaking as Ryuk’s fingers carefully covered a swollen lip with salve because Light had leaned into a close mouthed kiss and nicked himself good.  
  
  
Ryuk doesn’t answer but laughed so loud he might have drawn the attention of even his dullest minded brethren were he and Light not at the furthest end of the Shinigami realm's threateningly hot western desert.  
  
  
He can’t help but privately feel a sense of superiority when Light Yagami became desperate for his approval like that, enough to ask and open himself up to rejection.  
  
  
On earth Light had been desperate for no one.  
  
  
The sense of superiority wavered occasionally. Especially at the seeming glimpses at something darker going on beneath the surface, at Light as pushed him just a little too far with his cheeky, pointless and repetitive questions.  
  
  
  
Some paranoid part of Ryuk imagined he saw Kira. Calculating something beyond his understanding. Playing a chess game though the board and the pieces were mostly missing.  
  
  
Confiscated by the God who didn't intend to give them back.  
  
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
  
The paranoia continued to eat at him.  
  
  
‘Kira’ had always scared him, plenty enough, that he believed ‘pet’ was the mode where Light was least harmful to himself and others.

Today he's pulled out a collar and leash he’s brought back after some consideration from the human realm. The amber grain of the leather complimented Light's coloring nicely and it's plush even behind the metal closure.  
  
  
His pet is dealing with plenty of sharp edges already to have yet one more resting against his throat.  
  


This had been in case Light had been projecting his boredom onto him. Adding this new level to their relationship. He had burned the shinigami writing for 'Property of Ryuk." into the leather.   
  
  
And fitting it around the half-shinigami’s neck and pulling him forewords as he fought it a little, Ryuk could almost imagine a perfect universe where he would train the self-serving destructive impulses out of Light Yagami and they could live here in peace forever.

* * *

Maybe Ryuk had long ago passed the point of what had been remotely acceptable for him to take from someone who didn’t really know who or what they were.  


 

Sometime after realizing that, he'd become keen on making sure that should Light ever become a real shinigami - he’d never be able to forget this prolonged experience between the both of them, never want to forget it either.

Ryuk could make Light lose himself in ways he'd never seen the man on earth succumb to - not even under his beloved detective. He eventually felt he'd successfully eclipsed Light’s unknown past rendezvous with partners. There’d be no Death Note for him to give up to scrub the salience of their memories away now. Once you were shinigami you did not forget things that happened.  
  
  
This was more of a curse upon their kind, for having lived longer than most mortal worlds had existed, there were plenty of things Ryuk would have sought to forget if he could.   
  
  
That Light should be his forever was his aim, but at the very least, since even Ryuk figured that holding him indefinitely in their small home wasn't probably wasn't possible. Should he leave and manage to stay alive he would never lie alone at night without remembering what it felt like to have wanted him so badly that he would beg for his body on his own.  
  
  
He'd never be able to consider anyone else without knowing exactly how aroused and needy the lack of Ryuk's touch had made him. With more training Light would never come within any distance of him and not struggle to give in to his desires. No matter what his fledgling power grows into and no matter what he learns of this new world he inhabits, or if he ever recalled the human life he lost so young.

Ryuk had been focused on upping his rank since bringing Light home. Taking on assignments from his weird old man: causing plagues, coordinating mass death events in some of the more over populated mortal worlds. So that the longer Ryuk could keep Light literally under his wing as his dependent; the more likely it became that someday when Light was powerful enough to choose, he’d still choose to stay at his side.   
  
And… if he didn’t. If he wouldn’t take the right path with him after he'd done so much for his sake...

If Ryuk couldn’t have Light; no one else would have him without consequence.   
  
  
Collaring him had seemed a natural next step in Light's training as his pet. However it hadn't quite gone the way Ryuk had hoped.  
  
  
Light’s reaction to the collar had been two-fold. Initially he blushed prettily at having been given a gift, fingering the engraved writing with curiousity while making the corresponding phonetic sounds which Ryuk still doesn't understand how he learned how to do, “Your name is on this.” He acknowledged, “What else is written on here?”  
  
What’s the harm in telling him two words? “Property of.”  
  
“I thought... that the other shinigami could tell I was yours if they met me just by the way I smelled to them.” Light has an annoying habit of pointing out anything he finds illogical.  
  
“They’d better not get close enough to do that." Ryuk pat his ass several times, and then yanked him forward on the chain for a possessive kiss, "This is all for me.”  
  
Light expression soon veered from flattered to frustrated after he'd realized the collar was on him so Ryuk could tug him around without so much as telling him his intentions first.  
  
“Master," He said, after Ryuk had pulled him into their bedroom like a dog, "this is too tight. It's hot against my skin. Could I wear it occasionally?” Light scratched at his adam’s apple nervously. He pulls at the firm looped hook for the fifth time and it does not budge. The human-made hook fastening it had been replaced with an imp-made one such that only immense strength like Ryuk’s own could move it.  
  
“What, you don’t like looking pretty for me?” While it is patently false to claim the half-shinigami could only hope to ‘look’ pretty; appealing to Light's vainity might make the complaints stop. Light had once stunned most people to dumb fish-faced appreciation on an daily basis in ugly loose khakis and dull colored colored suits.  
  
  
Today in his loose-fitting black clothing he looked more like an angel of death. 

With the addition of a collar and chain where Light normally wore his long scarf, he is the vision of a high class male escort. The type of vision that makes Ryuk’s dick feel like it’s going to burst out of his pants if he looked at him too long.  
  
  
“You think I’m pretty?” Light tilted his head.  
  
  
There’s that blush come back to color his cheeks. Though Light’s voice sounds like even to be spoken of as pretty by his master, he’s not truly convinced the collar is worth that.  
  
  
“A little prettier when you wear my collar.”

  
“Oh,” He responds in a sigh. His face falls.  
  
Ryuk took the chain again and pulled Light down to his leather pants to where he was facing his visibly bulging cock straining against them in shiny outline.  
  
“I want to relieve you, master, but this constricts my throat too much,” Light explains, sounding aggravated, pointing to it like it's a curse, “When we did this the other day I made you wail out in shinigami.” He traces the skull face on Ryuk’s belt. “Yinprx brrifk O’ qu ehr nrrgrx oro, wasn’t it? It’s something else to hear you yell out like that.”

The way he hung himself with his words sometimes..(‘What did I do to deserve you?’) Light hadn’t growled enough for the ‘deserve' to sound right, but it was nearly fluent sounding. Luckily, he had no idea what he was saying.)  
  
  
Ryuk moves Light’s head not with the collar but with his huge black hand, pushing the boy away from his cock still restricted by the leater, "You sound ridiculous trying to speak our language. You may as well not try when don't even have the vocal chords for it, you are still not a real shinigami." He then brought a long spindly leg to his chest to wrap the chain around his ankle somewhat tightly. Light’s eyes widen, then he cries out as he is slowly dragged down by the chain when Ryuk stands up straight forcing the half-shinigami down to the ground, onto his stomach, next to the steel toe of his left black leather boot. "You'll never be a real shinigami if you don't learn from me."  
  
  
"What are you saying?" There is something in Light, that sparkle that's been in his eyes. The mischievous look. It's changing, his eyes shone with tears from the shock of this cruelty.  
  
  
“It’s not simple jewelry to take on and off, Light. You are mine. You forget you are mine. You don't feel it as deeply as you should. This collar is to train you.”  
  
  
“Seems unnecessary when I already know that, and you do, and _we’re the only ones who are ever here_.” Light was irrepressibly opinionated and talkative even with his face pressed against the rug in their bedroom. Ryuk found this disrespectful enough that he almost wished they were in the hot sand of their desert world at the height of summer instead so his face lied where it burned. That would mediate things a little better. Right now Light obviously wasn’t feeling threatened even down there by his deadly metal boot. To drive the point home, he’d step on him if that action wouldn’t potentially send him to Mu.  
  
  
“Oh It’s very necessary.”  
  
  
Light sighed haughty and annoyed, shades of his former self, always too many shades of him there, “If you say so,” half speaking into the rug and hitched his legs against his chest because he felt cold.  
  
  
Ryuk has him down there for a reason, “As you can see my shoes are dirty.”  
  
  
“You could let me clean them once in awhile. I've asked as much. I can hardly pry them off your big feet.” Light is muttering this like he's Ryuk's nagging wife. It would be more endearing how much Light loved everything on him and around him to be clean were he not kind of a tyrant about his environment being spotless. He has pillowed his two hands under his head and turned away from the boot.  
  


Ryuk didn't need nagging. Light had to be taught his place, “We do things on my schedule. I don't share your obsessions; I tolerate them. Are you saying you will disobey my request to do this now?” Ryuk had initially planned on asking for Light to kiss his boots to humiliate him a little, but... he's feeling an uncomfortable amount of pushback here. The atmosphere has grown tense and Light is more upset than he has any right to be. Doesn't he know how lucky he is?  
  
  
“Are you,” Light propped himself up a on his elbows as he realized what the command was asking of him, “Being serious?”  
  
  
“I could of course throw you out to test for yourself the capricious nature of our violent brethren. Your insolence about this collar is bad enough, if you disobey a direct order there’s no telling what I will do, you will clean them right now.”  
  
  
“How!?” Light was puzzled and upset by the command.   
  
  
“With your finest instrument, y'know?”  
  
  
Light nodded like he got that, because Ryuk had made such tasteless commentary about his mouth before, and he spat into his hand looking bitter about being made to do things this way. Ryuk then made him gasp by instantly nudging his steel toe under the halfling’s chin just as he was trying to work up enough spit to wipe at it.  
  
  
Lifting him forwards and upwards on the dangerous edge of the cold steel, he aligned Light's face so his amber gaze was drawn upwards towards Ryuk's enormous hands then shook one long finger at him in a slow ‘no’, “Not by using your hands.”  
  
  
When he got it, a wave of panic set in, “No. Master. I..” He begged, looking wild-eyed, “I’ll get sick.”   
  
  
Light was soon choking as his master set himself aloft pulling the chain suddenly taut.  
  
  
“Say ‘no’ to me again. I dare you.” Ryuk laughed maniacally. Alighting back down when his pet looked more appropriately terrified of him. Chaos, he'd almost forgotten how high this sort of thing made him feel.  
  
  
Cowed, Light bowed his head to Ryuk’s left boot and his tongue started to lick the thick dusting of dessert sand from the top of it. He gagged, vomited a little, then continues on while Ryuk undoes his belt and took his hard-on in hand.  
  
  
“Be thorough.” Ryuk commanded lazily, sticking his heel out when he sees Light is only attending the the top of the shoe because the bottom is a muddy mess. “You didn’t attend to my cock fast enough. So why don't you take on a little less responsibility.”  
  
  
He stroked himself firmly and watched Light degrade himself in a way he hasn't ever commanded him to do before. He used his other foot to slowly push down Light’s loose pants and boxers so he can watch his tight ass move as he tries not to vomit more from his cleaning.  
  
To the halfling's credit, he becomes fully engaged in the task. Moving in-between his legs to clean, going around the circumference of the boot. Licking in a circle getting dirt and grime all over his mouth and face. Crawling until his pants and underwear fall off onto the floor.  
  
Ryuk admired the way he can see his balls shake between the gap in his fit thighs. The way Light is diligently attending to this shock factor gross-out of a command is admirable. His confidence in Light’s loyalty and submission was being bolstered by the minute.  
  
  
“Good pet. Perfect.” He eventually approved, thinking he’d earned some praise after all. He's considering the way he's going to take Light bent on his hands and knees like this, once he's down this awhile longer. Enough so that he will think twice before complaining about his new collar again.  
  
  
He doesn’t even feel the slow loosening of where he had wrapped the chain around his ankle. Not when the wet sounds Light as making as he tries so hard to do what he’s been ordered, coupled with the way the divits in Light's back just above his perfect ass would be nice to rest his thumbs on, are practically all he is focused on.  
  


 The chain falls off, Light jumped into his lap and it is unexpected enough that when Light sits himself straight down onto Ryuk’s dick with the same bared ass Ryuk had been feeling more than a little hypnotized by, his face covered in dust and dirt, his eyes squeezed tight in concentration as he beared down, that the older shinigami simply let it happen. 

 

“Master, why deny yourself the best parts of me?” He moves luridly bouncing on his cock, and spit as much of dirt out of his mouth onto the floor as possible, confident as ever, “When you know you like this so much better. When you can’t feel the inside of me from down there,” He breathed hard as he moved again and he twitches his ass in a way that tended to make Ryuk growl, “Can you?”  
  
  
This sudden change in pressure, the tightness and unfamiliar dry heat gripping him is too much, Light squeezed at the base of his member again, “I always want you inside of me,” his master can smell he’s bleeding from forcing himself down on him without appropriate lubrication and as Light leans into his chest sighing and bouncing as Ryuk lost all his senses and finds his release there.  
  
He looked down, feeling hazy, half-aware he’d been yelling something and sees that Light isn’t even half hard.  
  
This hadn’t felt good for the halfling. It had hurt too badly. Light had just wanted to be off the ground and in control of the situation.  
  
  
Light had wanted to gain back control. 

  
He threw Light off of him and onto the rug, “Light Yagami.” His voice contained slowly boiling rage.  
  
  
Light’s half shinigami body is hardy enough to sit up despite being thrown a little ways, it looks like the fall had smarted a little though, “You came a ton.” He says trying to be cute, rubbing his back and winking at him.  
  
“Why did you stop doing what I ordered?” He had made it abundantly clear for Light that they hadn’t been playing a game. He feels a prickling of fear at the back of his neck. Light had gotten out of a situation where he should have been helpless because Ryuk had failed to pay full attention.  
  
Light speaks quickly, aware his master is angry and trying to defuse it, “I can’t clean your shoes with my mouth. Look at them. Now they are dirty and covered in saliva. Hardly an improvement. Also, I don’t think you would have gotten off watching me lick your shoes, come on. Anyway,” He stands up, “I’m going to the bathroom.”  
  
Ryuk wanted to torture him for this. It was an alien feeling until this moment. But when he had tried to establish dominance, Light had made moves to take it back from him.

Gravely, he knows what he has to do. He nodded, he walks over to Light. He unhooks the collar and takes it off and something in the coldness of the action makes Light blanch, the aura of the room feels changed, unwelcoming. Shaking his head at him in disapproval, he walks out of their room.  
  
Light, for once, has no idea what to say.

* * *

It’s been weeks since he’s given Light even an iota of physical attention and as expected it was driving the much younger creature mad. 

’Kira’ reared its ugly head earlier to land Light in this hot water with him. Ryuk would crush that dangerous ego out of him wherever it showed up. A willful pet was one thing, that was a danger to the halfling himself. A dangerous plotting megalomaniac in his bed and in his hearth was another.  
  
He walked to their bedroom where he has ordered Light to sleep alone.  
  
As soon as he is spotted, here in a space Light mentally associates with sex, the half-shinigami is practically writhing for him wordless with need, expressively conveying with his whole body how much his desire to have him join their bed again is practically eating him alive now. When he doesn’t respond to the beckoning Light starts up towards him eager and Ryuk lifted a hand to bid him stop.  
  
**“** Stay on your side of the room. Tonight you can bring yourself to climax in front of me and without me.”  
  
A disappointed whimper left him and he sat down; his amber eyes looked positively downtrodden.   
  
“Go on, Light.”  
  
Light looks down submissively, chewed his lip in a nervous tic he's developed then obeyed.

He has to hold back a groan when Light starts, showman that he is, by running a free hand from his structured stomach, up his chest, over his cheek then through his own hair, making himself look windswept. Gasping pornographically, whetting his lips with his tongue, making it clear that he is open and malleable - lifting his tight ass off the bed, ready to be taken.

  
He’s a calculating tease. That's a hard offer to refuse.  
  
Gripping his hard shaft with his free hand. The roughness of the leathery inhuman skin that goes up to the crooks of his arms is a pretty picture against his plush still-human flesh.  
  
“Put a finger in yourself like you’re preparing for me.”

Light is soon whimpering into the frigid night cold of their unheated bedroom, both his hands in use, hips rolling forward, his hand pumping himself harder, eyes locked on Ryuk as hungry to consume him as an open flame, the gold threads from his demonization flicker like the candle light in a fashion that could hypnotize a weaker being. 

His back arches prettily in an S-curve and his toes curl. His legs move against and twist the bedding apart, one of the furs falls to the floor and he doesn’t notice. He keeps going only focused on showing his master everything. As he’s been asked.  
  
Ryuk had asked for this, and it’s as close to completely coming undone without his master’s help that Light’s ever been, but the show is… He’d forgotten what it felt like, simply to watch the breathtaking man masturbate and not partake, it’s torturous.  
  
He tamps down the emerging desire to run to his slavish halfling, jump on him, pin him firmly and hotly fill him where they both need the connection most. Eventually his whole body is visibly shaking from the effort of staying disengaged. 

Light had know he was watching on earth, but likely, back then, he simply hadn’t cared. 

He hadn’t seen the death god as an equal when he had been 'kira', or as a sexual being- let alone a superior. Light who had always been the kind of person who wanted not just to be the hero of his own story, but of everyone else’s as well, had thought Ryuk also saw him as a hero and a leader. He had always spoken to him like Ryuk would live immortally on to be the bard of his short sad effort to make a difference on his one world.  
  
Yeah, right.  
  
“My heroic little slut,” Ryuk mused. Making Light lift an eyebrow in confusion, but he doesn’t stop stroking himself.  
  
Light couldn’t stop from touching himself now if he tried. His cock strains hard and weeping into his fist, precum coating the palm of his hand with slick and making it easier to rotate his wrist and flick his ruby thumbnail across his cock head, the pad of his finger settled a little into the slit so deliciously.  
  
“Please.” Light whispered. "Come back to bed."  
  
  
There he is. Ryuk’s filthy perfect boy-toy, no wanna-be ‘God of the New World’ could make an unguarded begging expression like that.  

 

The shinigami continued the struggle to see him this desperate to get on his cock only to hold back and not involve himself in the fun.  
  
“I’m staying here. Show me everything, pet. Don’t hold back.”

Light takes the permission seriously and splays his legs and strokes in increasing tempo, faster and faster while his strange amber eyes stay fixed on Ryuk. Finally he climaxes to the sound of his master’s heavy breathing noticeably hitching in response to Light’s wanton behavior, to watching him mewling out his sought-after release with his long legs twitching, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. Light calls out for approval, “Master?”    
  


Selfish as ever, greedy for a familiar caring touch to surround and caress him in the wake of his orgasm.  
  
  
Ryuk’s glowing red and yellow eyes observe the unmarred column of his pet’s neck as it arches. His cock aches to be freed. His teeth clench with the urge to bite down, his fingers press against his face as he thinks about forcing Light’s jaw open and ramming himself down that wet, waiting throat.  
  
  
Light would deserve it and he’d probably enjoy it truly for the first time instead of dutifully choking him down, because it would mean that Ryuk had finally broken this long refusal of him. And that Ryuk had finally given in to what Light had been trying to get from him ever since the denial part of training had began.  
  
  
As if he could read his mind, Light beckoned to him with two luminous red talons, looked down at his master’s leather pants and licked his fangs salaciously.  
  
“Clean yourself up and make sure to eat something today. There is some sushi and onigiri in the ice box. Sake as well, it might help you loosen up.” Ryuk talks to him like they are roommates and chuckles when Light makes a strangled sound at the back of his throat.  
  
  
As he turns to leave Light asks him, “What more can I do than this? Master. Please. I’m sorry.”  
  
  
“I don’t need sorry.”  
  
  
“… it’s been weeks.” Light’s voice is uncharacteristic of him. He was at such a mental breaking point that if Ryuk crossed the room to join now, even after the half-shinigami had already gotten himself off, in half a minute Light would be on his back making the heady sounds of willing surrender, allowing his elegant long legs to be pushed completely back to his sides.   
  


Finally letting Ryuk do what all he wanted without a question or complaint - without forcing Ryuk to muffle him and his master could tell that just in the way his voice was breaking.

  
“We have eternal life, weeks to me are like minutes seem to you. Learn this well. Nothing is forever but it feels like it when you are this weak.”  
  
“If time is meaningless then can we please go back to how it was before?”  
  
  
That gets an irritated chuckle out of Ryuk, “Go. Eat. I’ll see you tomorrow.”  
  
  
Light got up, wipes himself off with a cloth, and gets dressed. Ryuk floated away before the boy can cross his path in the doorway.

So ignorant; it was as if he had learned nothing yet. Though Light had paraded himself around in effort to have his master indulge his senses the way he normally did he’d failed to understand that his sex appeal was getting him diminishing returns in this situation.

  
He tried every day to get his lover back, but there was no real skill to it, because seduction had always been so easy before for him, it played out in unsolicited brushes against Ryuk’s body, soft pleading at the closed door to his study, occasionally a perfect body bared in the frigid cold to draw his eyes and Ryuk would only snap at him to redress himself. 

 

The temptation was maddening, of course. There would be raw delight in Light’s expression whenever Ryuk barely stopped himself from touching him out of habit. He’d then contort himself away from the boy, focus on the way his bones popped and slipped in and out of place at his whim and relish the frustrated ways Light would respond.

 

How badly he needed his attention wasn’t the point. He hadn’t learned the very important lesson his master was trying to impart yet.  
  
  
Yes. Ryuk could wreck Light whenever he wanted. 

 

Certainly. He could ravage, gently torment, take him apart then rebuild him psychologically almost like making him new; it took everything he had not to right away. This time has been as much retraining for Ryuk as it has been for his pet.

 

But, if Light could not be relied on to behave himself, to act according to where they stood as master and pet, then Ryuk had not truly mastered him. That wasn’t good enough for his liking.  
  
  
Not when by now Light should know him well enough to always be giving him exactly what he wanted.  
  


He was not Light’s. Light Yagami for all his beauty, intelligence and dignified bearing, was not even a true god yet. And was still partly mortal, he was weak, he needed rest, food, reassurances.  Being Kira’s dog was not in the cards, it wasn't Ryuk's destiny; Light could never again be allowed to believe he was in control.  
  


It had been hard to see ‘Kira’ clearly in someone who couldn’t remember they had lived a full human life, who couldn’t recall the most dramatic turns of it, but as long as the ghost of who he had been was still in there… what had happened the day he tried collaring Light proved it.  
  


Ryuk had once gone thousands of years at a time without sex. However, if it took much longer for Light to learn his lesson; the death god was going to have to learn the kind of self control which would feel like it rivaled a millennia long dry spell. An alarmingly beautiful Japanese half-shinigami trying to climb him like a tree was not an easy thing to ignore.  
  


He’d know exactly when Light had better learned submission. The vision of Kira’s partially remembered ego getting decimated might be better than sex. He didn’t need a babbling sycophant crawling at his feet (though he’d take that) and he didn't expect that outcome but he trusted Light best when his obedience was firm. Complete submission could be offered up to him not in the baring of an immortally perfect body to him but in the changed knowledge in Light’s captivating eyes.    
  


He was waiting for it to dawn on Light that the solution to this was as easy as addressing what had caused the problem in the first place. He was not a sherpa. It would mean nothing if Light was guided there. Light Yagami is a fixture in his home and he is not here to be handheld or worshiped but to anticipate his master’s needs and serve.

  
Until Light asked to have the collar put back on; they’d both be in this stalemate.

* * *

 

###  **It had been one month of being denied affection and entertainment. Surely Ryuk should have realized that the collar, which Light really didn’t want to wear, was unnecessary by now?  
**  
  
**Light thought about it again. About doing what he knew his master wanted and slipping the solid weight of it back around his neck and handing Ryuk the handle to communicate he was okay with that sort of... treatment.  
**  
  
**The collar was something he had hated. There was a total inability to take it on and off without his master’s help for one. How hot and itchy it had distracted him from enjoying the pleasure Ryuk had readily shared with him in the past. How it had felt to try to anticipate what Ryuk wanted when the chain was pulled and the right way to move, being yanked around by his neck was humiliating, and painful.**  
  
**Ryuk was being ridiculous. He knew what his master wanted. He could see it in their every interaction, and it wasn’t him on a leather string. Red pupils sometimes expanded until the yellow of his fish eyes too glowed entirely red whenever his master was feeling strongly about something. With this haunting reflective glow Ryuk bore holes into his back and Light could feel the shinigami’s unmet desires radiating up and down his entire being. His master had denied him most everything but the essentials for his survival since the day he’d demanded the collar be taken off. Light was more stubborn than he let on, he whiled his hours away drawing into his death note and concentrating on what he could remember of his past.  
**  
  
**He was frustrated with himself for not understanding how to get through to Ryuk by now. Maybe he should have followed through ‘cleaning’ Ryuk’s shoes with his mouth. He would have had more leeway to discuss after sex the reasons why the collar couldn’t be permanent.  
**  
  
**He’d expected his master would break down and relent. He’d never told him, would never tell him because it would make him angry, but Light could feel how hungry the God always was for him. When Ryuk got bored (which was often) he’d hint a little too clearly at all he was trying to keep from Light from knowing, and though he didn’t give him too much praise, Light knew that his master thought he was something rare enough to hold onto.  
  
  
It would have been nice to hear it said but it was it their bed when Ryuk would lose his mind from hedonistic indulgences between them that Light had found the deepest reassurances he was indeed special to his master. Shinigami tongue he would speak in unguardedly, Light had decoded enough to know it was a combination of praise and exclamations of all-consuming desire.**  
  
  
**Light had legitimate fears about Ryuk tossing him out if he got too angry with him. There was an underpinning of fear to their interactions now. Something deep inside him knew Ryuk was not benevolent - he had had these experiences with the Death God but they weren't clear. He remembered being given powers by the God. He remembered the feeling of being on the run, of being hunted by everyone else. His memories weren’t clear but he could remember losing Ryuk’s help times past, could remember needing his help desperately and not getting it.  
  
  
He could remember too, mildly, other shinigami - hulking monsters as terrible as burnt wounds into his consciousness. He knew that Ryuk was not lying about their nature either.**

###    
  
**It was madness to keep this up. All he knew was that Ryuk followed through on his promises and that he was protecting him now and that Light needed that protection. And to tread carefully because Ryuk could not be swayed from a decision once it had been made.**

###    
  
**He looked from where he is etching the face of a man in his dreams into his death note, a face only partially remembered. An older mortal, a human man, with kind eyes and a mustache, a proud looking man whose visage warms his heart. Light knew he had taken this man in death long ago. He knows the face isn’t quite right, because the memory is a blur, and for some reason the incomplete manner of the drawing makes his eyes prickle with tears. He must have done something good for Light once but as for Light. He can’t even recall the man’s real face.  
**  
  
**Negative thoughts like these are overtaking him without the company of his protector. He sighs and tears the page out, crumpling it with a disdain for his inability to recall even these things that feel so critically important. For a few minutes he watches the fascinating process of the death note regenerating a new page millimeters at a time to replace the torn page until he closes the book. He walks over to the wall hook from which the collar has been hanging since Ryuk took it off him unceremoniously dropping it to the floor and leaving in apparent disgust.**  
  
**He doesn’t want to wear this thing. If he put this cursed gift back on himself, his elder might never take it back off again just to prove he had ultimately won this needless power struggle between them.**  
  
**He shouldn’t have to to show Ryuk that he appreciates all he does to care for him when he can’t entirely care for himself. Light may push his master’s buttons but they are the only two here. He gets bored too.**  
  
**He slipped it on, though he can’t hook it closed with his own hands and goes to Ryuk’s study. Hopefully it will be enough.**

* * *

  
  
Ryuk had gotten back onto his gluttonous apple habit to distract himself from the maddening lack of sex and other contact, and he was crunching away at a fuji apple when his pet greeted him in the candle light with the collar loosely on. The half-shinigami held the handle part of the chain out towards him in silent apology.  
  
Apples were not half as luscious as Light looking contrite, staring at him vulnerably, waiting for his acceptance of this truce.  
  
“You knew what I wanted all this time,” He growled, biting through the center of the core, “Didn’t you?”  
  
Light held his gaze, “I did.”  
  
Ryuk’s thick lips close and thin with disapproval. He’d not wanted to believe Light was trying to win this test of his loyalty like it was meant to be a competition between them for who would give way first. This meant he’d known full well that his master wanted him badly enough he could brandish it as a bargaining chip. It meant that his pet had been waiting for his master to heel first.

  
“Yet, you’ve tried to seduce me other ways.” He ate the apple entirely, swallowing the bottom part of the core as well. “Be honest, are you, heh, well, you?”  
  
  
“Am I… me?” Light questioned. He stopped holding the handle out.  
  
  
“Kira.” Ryuk spat it like a curse word. “Do you know this word?”  
  
  
No comprehension flashes across his face, but Light sputtered because of the apparent gravity of the statement, “Is it in a language from a mortal realm? It doesn’t sound like our language. What does it mean?”  
  
“Kneel.” Ryuk barked, not addressing his questions as usual. Light falls to his knees on command as his master strides forward to relock the collar, Light leans forward into his enormous hands longingly, “This might be enough to get me back. But first you must explain your choice to deny me what you knew I wanted.”  
  
  
“It was your choice!” Light cries out, then falls silent as claws two claws extend towards his eyes.  
  
  
“Maybe you’d be better behaved without vision, hm? Tell me.”  
  
  
“I told you as much when you first put this on. The collar is unneeded, it doesn’t prove to you I’m yours. I do! I have! I will!”  
  
  
“Strange. How do you prove to me you are mine by denying me the things that I want during sex?”  
  
  
“…I...” Light doesn’t know. But it can’t be the Ryuk show all the time, can it? Light might exchange sex for protection but he’d thought the God respected him. Cared about more than about how fuckable he was.  
  
  
Ryuk took the handle of the collar, “Follow my lead or stay still. Do not reach for me.” He commanded. “Answer what I ask.”  
  
  
First he pulls Light a little closer, only close enough to feel the way he towers above him in a more intimate space. But they do not touch.  
  
“Will you wear my collar like a good pet?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“And you will stop complaining about it?”  
  
It’s never coming off again, is it? Light grimaces because he'd been hopeful that was not the case but he agreed, “…Yes.”  
  
“How would you like me to touch you first?”  
  
“Please. Please right now.” Light allowed him to put the stupid hot collar back on. He didn't care what happened next as long as it involved getting pounded into their mattress or a wall.  
  
“I didn’t say when. How?”  
  
“I like it when you-"  
  
Ryuk slaps him open palmed with some force, Light turns his head to spit out blood from his inside cheek bleeding into his mouth.  
  
“I’ll repeat that. How would you like me to touch you first?”  
  
His much missed source of stress relief is almost back within his grasp, Light's sex appeal is off the charts as he looks at him smolderingly, “However you’d like.”  
  
“That’s almost the right answer but it's missing something.”  
  
"However you'd like, master."  
  
"That's right, pet. However I would like." Ryuk inches closer. Light can feel his intoxicating power within reaching distance. It's only increased since they've been together, "I'm not convinced yet. What would you give me to make that happen?"  
  
"All of me."  
  
"And you won't talk nonsense about leaving here? Or me fighting off other shinigami for you anymore?"  
  
"...no." He hadn't ever meant he'd leave here without Ryuk. He'd thought... he'd thought he could fight beside him and they could see the outside world together.  
  
  
Ryuk laughed cynically, he doesn't believe for a minute that he'll get more than a few days without questions and flights of fancy, Light's mind was always in overdrive, but he yanked him upwards, to where he is standing, "So are you, _you_? Answer that."  
  
  
There is a minute of silence until Light, miracle of miracles, understands. "No I am not me. I am whoever you want. I am yours."  
  
  
"That's right, pet. So let me teach you who you are." He leaned far down and licks up Light's neck and face with his long tongue, and felt the halfling shiver with primal need.

* * *

  
Ryuk doesn’t kiss him on the mouth like he normally does, he pushed Light with his full palm onto the floor first to where he is kneeling.  
  
He undoes his master's giant belt and eventually the tip of his freed cock is nudged against his lips insistently.  
  
The half shinigami is unused to starting sex without any foreplay but he is soon obediently mouthing at a dark thick cock that completely fills up the cavity of his mouth and when he moves his hands to his master’s thighs to hold on while he sucks him off, they both are swatted away back to his sides.  
  
“Stop that.”  
  
His master seems annoyed to reiterate that he’d asked not to be reached for. Light struggles to balance on his knees and Ryuk uses the collar to set the rhythm as he’s bobbing his head on his member.

Ryuk pulls the collar forward and he lodges himself in Light’s throat cuing his gag reflex unexpectedly. Light dry heaves painfully around the member but keeps his jaw wide.

His master groans and pushes forward even further and Light just barely stops himself from pushing away in panic. Ryuk’s entire cock can’t all fit and if he tries he might kill him.

Ryuk stops at the back of his throat and says, “We’re going to work on this. You aren’t all that good at it yet. Learn how to relax your throat.”  
  
His cock slick with saliva and mucus from the back of Light’s throat he pulls out and moves him onto his back, forcing his knees upside his head so he’s folded over with his ass in the air and looping the chain about his outstretched arms so he can’t move.  
  
Unlike their typical sex positions, Light can't hold his master or lean into him to feel his heart thud, the contact between them is only where Ryuk’s pelvis meets his ass, so he’s freezing from the airy cold in their home while Ryuk fills him with his huge member. It’s good to be full of his master, it feels right, but Light can barely concentrate on that for everything else going on.  
  
“Did you miss this?” He says and Light wants to cry out, ‘yes, I still do.’ because this isn’t like it was before.  
  
Instead he says, “Yes, master.”  
  
“Move. Find your prostate yourself against my cock.” Light shimmies as best he can in this constrained position, until that easily stimulated part of himself is where the pressure is hit, and he rubs against it.  
  
He makes a noise of contentment as growing pleasure overtakes over his mind just enough to distract him from all the chains and cold and lack of contact. Ryuk only laughs demonically and moves his cock away from where it was starting to edge him into bliss.  
  
“Please. Please,” He moans pathetically, "There. You were right on it."  
  
“No Light. How am I going to train the cocktease out of you if you get an great orgasm after your little stand-off?” The shinigami crowed, showing no care at all for if Light felt good. Ryuk takes him then in fast rough strokes with most the pressure concentrated against his tailbone rather than his prostate.  
  
Light can feel his cheeks starting to bruise from Ryuk's slamming pelvis into his soft tight backside. He can't zone out as the unnaturally twisted position keeps his mind totally aware.

It seems like forever until Ryuk spills his hot release into him, the pulsing of his cock sends a pleasant little shock through him, “You are mine. Slut.”  
  
He leaves him stranded, only undoing the chain to take him out of his folded position -so he lays there hard, cold, uncovered, unsatisfied and totally alone - chained by his neck on the hated collar to the bedpost left to sleep on the floor when he is feeling too numb to even cry.

* * *

Light comes to wish he had worn the collar without hesitation. Though his master takes it on and off, he learns to associate it with being taken care of.  When the collar comes off he's often alone again. He lost track of time. All he knows is that by the point he can stop sleeping on the floor in pools of his own tears, sick from the verbal debasement and violent physicality he's endured, he never wants to truly anger his caretaker ever again.  
  
It feels best to give in however many times it takes to earn a kind word, to earn a kiss instead of another slap to the face, or temporary carving into his flesh.  
  
Slowly but surely his master turns pain to pleasure, solitude into warmth, fear into longing. He buries his face in deceptively gentle black wings and let’s his hands wander over the dangerous solid body that protects him from the cruel outside realm.  
  
He starts to use, "Yours." like a promise. A promise to his master to be what he wants. A promise to himself to forget a longing to be something other than owned.  
  
"Yours!" He says gasping it inspiring thick, rubbery lips to descend upon his own.  
  
"Yours." He repeats as a tongue larger than his own member curls around it, pulsing wet slick around him, making him feel electric, debauched.  
  
"Yes, all mine." Ryuk says, filling him entirely after bringing him to a shattering climax.

The name-calling recedes. The violence dies down.   
  
Light learns to bite his tongue when his thoughts scream why. The questioning part of him slowly quiets too. He simply is.  
  
And they lie together in the bed his master has made for him.  
  
He doesn't learn to like it. He learns to find pleasure there.

* * *

For the most part, his training of Light to absolute submission had proved successful.The younger half-shinigami has not reminded him of ‘kira’ in years. He had learned his place. He had assumed his role.  
  
Back then, when Light had gotten a little too comfortable with their intimacy and companionship and had tried to take the reins (as if theirs was the kind of relationship which allowed for exchanges of power ) Ryuk had subjected him to a half year of constant degradation to establish his dominance was not to be questioned. Maybe Ryuk had been too hard on him, dragged it out a little too long but it had all worked out for the most part.  
  
He’d made it so that if he wanted something from his pet, from having his shoes licked clean to having Light praise him for his help to having his cock deep throated, Light would do as he’d been told without so much as a sour face.Light also hadn’t bothered posing the kind of questions Ryuk doesn’t like to hear anymore. His master was almost disappointed he was wrong that there could be no true discouraging of Light’s curiosity. He’d not meant to kill the all of his desire to know more.  
  
He’d only meant to snuff out the ember of the fire that could ignite and destroy them both. This perfect thing he had with this former human he would do anything to protect.

There is more fallout than the outward quieting of Light’s inborn curiosity. Light occasionally shies from his touch where he hadn’t ever before, a full body flinch when Ryuk doesn’t make it clear he’s about to touch him, and a willing clouding of the bright intelligence in his lustrous eyes that would take over when his master fastened his collar onto him, but these were small problems compared to the ticking time bomb that would have been ‘Kira’ reemerging to take hold of his physically fragile companion and make him believe he could be too much more than his master’s best loved belonging.  
  
The shinigami has tried to rebuild the trust that had existed before the grueling breaking of will he’d put his pet through. There had been no guides on how a demon should break in a slave and there were certainly no guides on how to undo things when you’d possibly gone a might bit too far. What he has, all he can offer, are the sort of gifts which would not be glaring reminders of an upbringing in central Tokyo. Light has built a greenroom in their makeshift kitchen. Generators power heating lamps for the project which was his master’s idea but his to execute.  
  
He’s growing an apple tree for Ryuk and a herb garden for himself. He loves the smell of herbs,of lavender, shizo leaf, rosemary, oregano and basil. He’d also found some worms and spiders over the years in the food brought back to him. He cultivates those little creatures as well and says they are good for the crops. But his master suspects he anthropomorphizes them as his friends, he sometimes walks in on him cupping them one of the larger spiders in his hand like it is precious to him. Ryuk walks in to find him spraying emergent tiny leaves with a water bottle.  
  
He gets his attention first so he can touch him without causing him to flinch. Light puts the water bottle down on the large ceramic pot the sapling is housed in and melts into Ryuk’s gangly arms, “It’s taking so long.”

“Hm?” Ryuk muses, twirling a silken auburn lock which is starting to grow too long again around his index finger’s claw. Light had been skilled at cutting his own hair but he didn’t pay too much attention to his own reflection anymore unless his master remembered to remind him to do so. The longer hair made him look less like Light Yagami, respectable super genius, and more like a prince from a fairytale.  
  
  
“Your apples.”  
  
  
“That’s because it’s a tree from a mortal world.” It had been taking a long time to grow. But things from Earth were all made to be too fast or too slow. Nothing had been designed quite right with the exception of Light Yagami.  
  
“You'd brought me the books on this… gardening… making food the way mortals do. Will you leave for the mortal worlds less when this is all grown?”  
  
“A little less. I still must bring you other kinds of food and things to amuse you. And the other shinigami would question where I had gone if I don't see them. I don't want them here looking for me.”  
  
  
“You can entertain me. I wish you were here all the time.”  
  
  
“Do you, now?” He doesn’t like cloying praise, that’s a little too much even for his pet for him to believe in when he obviously enjoys his alone time, “What do you think about when I’m not here?”  
  
  
“Making this tree grow. Having you home more often. Then beating you at Tetris. And scrabble. And jenga. And cards. And checkers.”  
  
  
Ryuk chuckled, in the virtual arena his pet could often hand his butt to him and he didn't mind at all, that wasn't the real way of the universe. It didn’t change the fact he was a million times more magically powerful, “You are good at all those games, but did you want a new game?” Light doesn’t ask for much of anything nowadays, so he has to guess.  
  
  
“I’m bored of games. Your company is better.”  
  


“You're sounding kind of pathetic, Light-o. Perhaps we can practice fighting...”  
  


Light smiles sphinxlike at him and conceded a familiar, “If that’s what my master wishes.”  
  


Ryuk imagined being able to show him the full extent of his power without sending him to Mu and it gave him a thrill but unless Light is given a way to achieve more demonic prowess this would be impossible.  
  


Submission would couple with deeper respect though. If his pet only knew what he was capable of, could only see it for himself, “I’ll think about it.”   
  


Finding a way to give Light powers was a ton more work than popping down to human grocery stores at nighttime to steal their goods from off camera. Far more tough than negotiating getting healing potions and salves for gambling winnings with his fellow shinigami or various kinds of demons he ran into on earth.   
  


He was getting too overconfident in the success of Light’s training. ‘Pathetic’, he decided again, laving his tongue down the V of Light’s jutting hipbone to find his member at full attention for having thought about serving his master’s wishes, was probably better than ‘self sufficient’.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The completest submissiveness is your lot, and that is all;” Marquis de Sade

In Heaven Kira was infamous.  
  


Undeservedly infamous.  
  
  
L had stayed in Heaven for that reason despite being offered an auspicious reincarnation for having saved the lives of many people through his detective work in life and having brought hundreds of orphans out of poverty and raised them well through donations of his money.  
  
  
Nearly any other human to use the death note extensively had been sent directly to the gates of Mu where their existence was forever blotted out in inky blackness. At first L had only stayed to wait for Kira to get what was coming to him on earth. Waiting for his last case to be resolved by heaven's justice.   
  
  
And, it disgusted him so much that his murderer had purportedly faced the afterlife scott-free and with the ability to keep killing humans as he might wish, _becoming a shinigami_ , that L had continuously turned the option for reincarnation down and learned all he could about the demon realms so that Kira would know true defeat.  
  
  
In Heaven and in Hell, humans could balance or improve their karma then eventually seek reincarnation. In Heaven the humans with the best karma had the options to become angels and serve God. One-wings were the lowest rung of new angels, then angels after that, then arch-angels as the highest enforcers of God's laws and the higher seraphim as the executers of God's perfect plans - all angels could improve their karma by inspiring good will, healing others and completing good acts in the mortal realms.  
  
  
In Hell mortals suffered torment until their souls had paid for the negative karma they incurred during badly lived lives. L kept track of a few individuals he had known in life. But a law of heaven was that angels could not give grace to those they had known when they were mortals, and could not watch after them except in the moment of their death. Angels were only meant to shadow the most fervent believers of God. Grace bestowed on humans for any other reason would lose an angel some karma. Grace and healing given to a mortal one knew in life meant one would be immediately reincarnated because they could not be trusted with their power.  
  
L had not visited the human realm but a few times then. Once to hold Mello, one of the Wammy children he had unwisely chosen to get to know him personally, as he was dying, so young from having tried to force Kira out of the shadows. And once to watch Light Yagami die. He hadn’t known how to react, his feelings concerning Light were compicated, he had simply knelt and watched, as Light had, but with a kind expression.

  
Death Note users, who had done more than test the Note and played with life and death, had overstepped the boundaries of the Realms of Fate. They were sent where all permanently irredeemable existences were sent.  
  
  
‘The black nothingness beyond the gate: Mu.’   
  


No-one came back out from Mu and everyone feared being sent there. Neither angel nor demon was immune to fear of what lay in that space, not even the most powerful in all the realms of fate could say what was in store for those who went there. L had read in the history books the great kings of hell claimed it was a place where your soul knew madness and pain without end. The angelic leaders said that it was where eternal rest could be found; where your soul became part of the mysterious energy that flowed through the universe.  
  
  
There existed no all-knowing being who could explain the why of Mu or what it was either.  
  
  
God, who ran the heavens, who could take any form, had the power make anything happen in the mortal worlds, or make entire new ones at its whim- had been always content to remain silent on the matter but the seraphim would sometimes admit they didn’t think God knew either.  
  
  
God had spent the last few weeks as a giant grey rabbit creature the size of an elephant. Its seraphim would hold onto God's lush fur and cry as it gave them visions of perfect happiness or whatever the hell. L really could not have cared less. When he'd first seen God it had been a jellyfish creature, neon tentaces floating in the dreaming skies of heaven.  
  


So the angels stuck with the job of overseeing the realms of fate tried to enforce a Godly morality without his... spoken guidance.  
  


It made L glad he had stuck with atheism in his mortal life. A choice which had automatically disqualified one to be a seraphim.  
  
  
He trained up fast though and had been given utmost power suiting an archangel, a messenger of God because he was an incredible astute in magic and helpful to the realm.  
  
  
The aforementioned infamous story of Light Yagami claimed Kira had evaded his sentence to Mu using black magic. He had become a shinigami.  
  
  
His shinigami transformation should have been impossible.  
  
  
Many angels in heaven had worked powerful magic to direct his passage to Mu. It should have happened without incident. Kira's karma should have been too heavy to achieve a transformation into another form.  
  
  
The angelic tribunal kept a special force in case their predictions that he would reemerge to exact his peculiar brand of justice on earth again were true.L had moved up the ranks in the angelic realm quickly to prevent this from happening.  
  
  
He had believed that Kira was becoming a powerful shinigami all that time who at any point might regain its memories and start trying to rule the Earth which he had left in political upheaval and religious war.  
  
That was before pictures came across his desk in his round office in the high enquiry tower in Valhalla District. They were from an infiltration operation into the state of the neutral shinigami realm by entering demon's homes…  
  
L’s stomach flip-flopped when he was going through them. At first he thought he was hallucinating, but on closer inspection, no, there was his murderer in the flesh.  
  
The pictures had been sent to him because there was a half-demon in the realm and L needed to decide which level of hell to inform that a non-shinigami half demon had been stolen from the level it really belonged.  
  
L was excellent at demon profiling by now.In the picture he was hold now, Light Yagami looked nearly human except for some small but significant details that were not native to any demon species. But shinigami were supposed to take on forms specific to their sins and demonic preferences. They did not have consistent forms amongst themselves.  
  
Another demon had Light on a choker floated above him in the photo, aloft on menacing black wings, holding both his shoulder and dragging the chain link forward possessively forwards. A monstrous shigami with thick dark lips and shark teeth bared in a crazy too-wide smile.  
  
In another photo, Light sat in the same shinigami’s lap on a bed, half-dressed looking up at him with a foreign expression and haunted eyes. The shinigami’s black hand obscured his torso, grabbing at it.  
  
Those empty eyes communicated everything L needed to know about what Light had become; his blood was boiling as he realized…

That Light hadn’t become a shinigami to escape heaven’s judgment and his karma.  
  
Light had been forced to become a slave to one.

  
L called for his colleagues to bring him the spy who had taken the photos. He was a wood sprite and could become the color of his surroundings. L addressed him by lifting up the least lurid photo in the set and pointing to the source of his curiosity, “Lati, Who is the shinigami , do we know?”  
“The blue male?” The small creature had an avidly curious buck-toothed expression and shook as it spoke, with excitement.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Ryuk, sir. I'm sorry I failed to attach a report. There is very little on file about him so he must be lower ranked amongst his kind. The half-demon with him is out of place and seems to be a slave!”  
  
L paused. He should be at peace with this outcome, really. It was a bad ending for a bad person. But the rage he was feeling continued to grow, he’d been preparing for an epic battle to come with…  
  
With a victim who needed to be rescued from a clown-faced specter.  
  
Light had become pathetic, and L, who should have been satisfied with this turn of events, couldn’t have been less happy for it. It was a punishment, to be sure, but it wasn't the one Light had earned.  
  
“That’s no half-demon.” L finally breathed.  
  
  
“Oh I know he looked human, sir, but he has these shiny golden eyes and red claws, you see so he’s certainly a halfling of some sort. If I had to guess - I'd say incubus because those sorts are always the pretty boys. I do hope the pictures weren’t too trying on you; I try to capture only moments from the demon realms that will not cause any great distress to the good-hearted angels. Demons treat the half humans much rougher than the damned when they become slaves like this you know. I was trapped in that room many hours before I could move safely again. Voracious appetites, I'd say, those Death Gods.”  
  
  
L wants to make him stop talking immediately and resists the urge to kick him in the throat. The mental images... he can't deal with them... “The markings on this one are atypical,” He would not be telling this random worker bee he had found whom the heavens had been on the look out for for five years, “Lati, I’m going to investigate the situaion with the misplaced half-demon myself. Tell my receptionist to inform Naomi I’ll be back in time for tea. ”

* * *

 **  
**  
It's a horrid hot summer day, at the edge of the realm in Ryuk’s house which Light never left he is waiting for his master to bring him the weekly list of names which he can write in his death note. He is shirtless and in billowy canvas pant, the fans in their home do little against the desert heat now that it's high summer.  
  
There came a soft knock at the wooden door to their home.   
  
Ryuk never knocked. He just came in and kissed him, collared him or left him to his own devices.  
  
So Light peered through the peephole, heart pounding in fear and made out a shadowy but thin figure.   
  
It was looking at him with troubled, very human eyes. He’d been told to hide from visitors but this was his first one and the visitor didn't look like a monster. Ryuk doesn’t let him talk to anyone. Maybe this one just needs directions somewhere else.   
  
  
Maybe Ryuk wouldn't find out if Light dealt with this quickly enough. It would be nice to talk to someone else for even a little while.  
  
  
Before him the pale winged creature with transcendently dark eyes and wild dark hair stood and stared at him equally transfixed, “I had to know. When the news came to me of what became of you. I needed to know it was true. To see this to see you changed to this form. You are nearly unchanged. _God in heaven_ , why.”  
  
  
It’s a bad idea but Light let the rambling creature into his master's hearth because his heart is soaring like never before. Elation fills him as if this is a moment of untold joy as if he has stepped into the eye of storm then found the mirror of his deepest desires inside of it, this beautiful creature - an angel, he must be. But these feelings stem from seemingly nowhere. Maybe they are just the ones that go along with meeting something this pure.  
  
  
“I”m sorry this has happened to you. A crueler fate still that it seems I can’t save you from it just yet.” The angel lamented, big tears are falling down his face.  
  
“What are you saying to me? What is it that happened to me?” Light begged of the strangely emotional visitor, he can’t get over the creature’s glorious luxuriant snow white wings, nothing like his master’s scraggly black boa-esque feather ones.  
  
  
“You really don’t remember who I am?” The perfect lithe creature’s eyes narrow examining his face.  
  
  
“I don’t know my past. When I looked at you all I know is I felt... I don't know, moved and seeing all of you now; I'm very glad to see you.”  
  
  
“I’m not the one of us who’d be hurting in the case your memories had remained in tact. It is perhaps the only blessing you’ve been given, Kira.”  
  
  
“Kira? What is kira? My master has said that word before as well."  
  
  
"Oh what devil has you? Tell me his name."  
  
  
"Devil? He's my master. His name is Ryuk."  
  
  
The stranger's lip curls, "I have to go. Do research. Now."  
  
  
"Can’t you stay here and talk with me? You are the first being I’ve seen like myself that I can remember. More beautiful than me but… you are like me?”  
  
  
“How humbled you must be now to be able see anyone as lovelier than yourself. Least of all me.”  
  
  
“Won’t you stay? My master has flown for a bit to help me find names for my black notebook. You don’t seem to want to harm me. Maybe it isn’t clear to me but I must know you somehow. I can listen to you without speaking. I'm good at that.”  
  
  
“You do know me. Not well. But intimately, I would say. You killed me once.”  
  
  
“What… I…” Light doesn't know how to take this accusation.  
  
  
“You killed me in cold blood but even I don’t think you deserve this fate.”  
  
  
“What are you talking about? You’re scaring me.” Rather than a visitor looking for something, Light now suspected the angel was quite mad and lost as a result.  
  
  
“I have to go Light. You tell your master I came here. Tell him I’m the most resourceful archangel in heaven. Tell him I’ll be back.”  
  
  
“I won’t do that.” Light sniffed, the weight of many emotions is upon him because he shouldn't probably lie to his master but that would be a worse idea than having let the angel in. The older death god has a nasty temper when disobeyed.  
  
  
“I know you won’t,” The creature smiled, “You were never one to put all your cards on the table. What I am trying to say to you is he cannot hope to face me. He wouldn't hold a candle to me.”  
  
  
“Stay then if there's nothing to worry about? Stay here.”  
  
  
“No,” The angel said and chastely kissed him on the cheek. Light was not used to chaste kisses and he held his cheek in response, stunned, “I cannot stay. It's pointless when I can't help you leave this realm. You will not follow me out either. You’ll wait for something more meaningful from me than the stolen names of innocents like that ugly creature gives you.”  
  
  
“When will you return?” Light said, still holding his right hand to his cheek over where the angel had kissed him; he slightly blushed.   
  
  
“Perhaps. It could be never. Help would be more than Kira deserved. But Light may be redeemable, so you must wait for me. Keep your hope.”  
  
  
Then the visitor left the same way he'd arrived. All of this happened in the span of minutes and then minutes later it seemed too surreal to have happened at all.   
  
  
Light slumped into one of the chairs in the living space wondering if years of loneliness and avoiding contact with everyone but Ryuk had left him hallucinating angels who appeared alluding to the promise of flight.  
  
  
The elation had left him now and he felt shaken and oddly much lonelier than before. Observing his master's rules to keep to himself seemed wiser than ever.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jumping back to give context of L's visit to Light.
> 
> “In order to be in control, you have to have a definite plan for at least a reasonable period of time.  
> So how, may I ask, can -man- be in control  
> if he can't even draw up a plan for a ridiculously short period of time,  
> say, a thousand years, and is, moreover, unable to ensure his own safety for even the next day?”  
> // Mikhail Bulgakov The Master and Margarita
> 
> "Every second dripping off my fingertips (I could do most anything to you)  
> You can't leave. You can't leave."  
> //Somewhere a Clock is Ticking

Light was his possession. _That’s all he should ever needed from the halfling but Ryuk wanted…_

_more._

_Having Light had made him want much more._

He had tried, with what little patience he was able to muster, to research and find a spell. Some fool-proof protective measure to keep the incomplete shinigami safer than his half-human form made him. 

Nothing was really working out. He'd painted power runes on the boy and fed him fruit from the lower realms to no avail. Light was still as weak as a kitten for a shinigami.   
  
  
Ryuk had grown desperate. Should Light meet another shinigami who wasn't Ryuk's friend he was toast. Ryuk was spending longer periods than ever away from Light searching for an answer.   
  
  
Today when Ryuk returned to his home he was greeted by an unfamiliar atmospheric change. He had the sinking realization that someone other than him had come into his home. Something other than Light's scent peppered the air with brightness. Is this creature here now? His deadly hands clench into fists and he snarled low to himself ready to rip any torso or neck apart with his rows of shark teeth as soon as he found the intruder.  
  
  
Yet pacing around he'd thus far found nothing out of order within any of his rooms. Light was fast asleep too early in the day and even drooling into his pillow. He looked completely at ease.  
  
Somehow even that dumb look was attractive on the young creature. Light on his back with his head lulled to one side, his auburn hair made a sunny wreck around his face. The source of his drooling was instantly apparent as Light’s tongue automatically worried at his eye-teeth fangs in his sleep. He did that when he was nervous though. Predictable little human habits that had stayed with him past his rebirth and had presented dead giveaways to Light's emotional state.  


Ryuk sniffed the air again to make sure he wasn't losing his mind.  
  
  
It smelled like a church full of flowers on earth, incense made in an offering for a recently deceased beloved human, it smells the polar opposite of how this den of private perversions should smell. All musk and good incense over the muted smell of sex.  
  
No, he wasn't crazy at all. Someone else had to have been here in his home. He continued to feel how the atmosphere charged with a raw magical power. The kind Light did not even begin to possess. Of a kind that was too sparkling clean to be his own.  
  
  
Although tight security hadn’t previously been a concern for Ryuk in his highly unremarkable shinigami eternity, he’d become interested in it after Light had made this unexpected turn from an amusing habitual liar, delusional self-proclaimed ruler of the earth into Ryuk’s amnesiac and dependent lover.  
  
  
His young brother, not of blood, but in the sense of how they were both part of the small, always decreasing pool of shinigami. Brethren in a callous calling to reap life without remorse and live forever.  
  
  
Ryuk had not committed to any stringent measures of security other than a basic dark magical ward forged from a pentagram on his door to keep his lazy kin at bay. He'd strictly forbidden Light from letting others into their home.  
  
  
The real concern would be if any of them happened upon Light in their daily routines. He could well imagine the horrendous violence. He'd killed a few weak shinigami in his day. Back before he realized it wasn't worth it to move up the ranks in that way. Before Justin Armonia Beyondormason had become close to him and convinced him that the shinigami needed each other to live well throughout eternity.   
  
  
Light had no magical ability to break the ward and so whoever had visited had both broken then perfectly reconstructed it on their exit.  
  
  
Powerful or not, if this visitor had as much as looked at his pet with desire they were going to find out shortly what Mu had in store for them. For who would not covet him one so lovely as Light?  
  
  
The way he felt towards Light Yagami had always been possessive. It wasn’t all shinigami who would proffer a guaranteed death to a death note user in the event they ruined their own lives with their use of the note. And he’d felt as if Light existed for his sole amusement from the second he showed the shinigami over 400 human names scrawled all over his death note with an exuberance Ryuk thought humans only reserved for their little glowing screen entertainment.

No doubt a human who’d made him laugh that heartily deserved such a gift. He hadn’t visited earth for more of the same tired old shit and he’d been greatly rewarded for his attempt to relieve his own boredom in the unusual character of Light Yagami. A human who had issued him a ticket for a game so earth-shatteringly grand in scale that the human world was still more or less broken for his having started it.  
  
He’d had grown even more possessive still since Light’s death and resurrection into their little family. The transformation coupled with Ryuk’s ability to dictate through suggestion what parts of his personality reemerged had made the new shinigami alluring enough to Ryuk that the idea of anyone else so much as viewing his half-brother had become an enraging one.

 _His desire to own Light and never let him go was not the only matter that drove him to madness each sleep cycle that his elegant pet spe covered in the furs of unknown dead creatures while draped conservatively in all black against prying eyes. If Ryuk could not find something soon the other shinigami would pass to Mu from one deadly cause or another._  
  
In the five years he had kept Light alive, he had gone through every healing potion and salve he’d owned. The harshness of the shinigami realm was only one factor gnawing at their security. Every year it grew less and less likely that his brethren would not catch on that he was hiding something he considered precious in his home. 

_Especially as he’d gotten to the point he was stealing things from them to keep his pet in good shape.  
_

Were Light also full-blooded shinigami he could have both protected himself. He could have been more than a toy in a box. He could have been a mate and Ryuk could have been _violent_ with him. Not play violent, as he was now because he couldn't help himself it was too fun to hear Light scream, but powerfully dominant - completely unforgiving.  
  
Assuredly, Light would change his lovely form if he completed his transformation though so it kept Ryuk from searching for ways to aide in Light’s evolution because a visually unappealing outcome wouldn’t do. Ryuk was too attached to Light’s current form.

 

He’d grown so used to coming home and pounding his memory-challenged half-brother into the nearest available surface.  
  
It was addictive because Light was _slutty_. Ryuk hadn’t expected him to be so sexually voracious where he was concerned. He had imagined from the first time he pulled the boy into his lap he’d have to force everything from that point onwards. Never had he been more pleased to be wrong about something in his immortal life. Light lived and breathed for a kind word from Ryuk. He kept the former human hungry for his approval. Staying sparing with praise making sure to never say that Light was anything special or gorgeous. When he felt impressed by Light’s dedication to getting his attention he spoke his approval. So that Light knew when he was being a good pet. 

  
Even in spite of consistent efforts to keep Light in line, he suspected the boy was too pampered by him. He whimpered if Ryuk didn’t hold him as he was trying to drift to sleep after the larger creature had worn him out.  He complained whenever the food Ryuk brought wasn’t to his tastes. He complained if Ryuk had been gone too long or if he was done with the limited entertainment Ryuk brought for him to while his hours away on.  
  
Ryuk sat on the bed, Light’s primary sanctuary in the cage he willingly inhabited after successfully being made to believe his life was owed to the older shinigami and the worst possible fate for him was to be abandoned by his master, to be left unprotected and vulnerable.  
  
In reality, even if Light had done nothing but disobey him, the younger, much weaker shinigami would have only found himself in unbreakable chains being made to learn what it truly meant to be chosen as a pet by a superior type of demon.  
  
Now, hearing the younger shinigami breathe heavily Ryuk says gently into the air, “Who did you let in you idiot? Will I have to tear it from those liar’s lips you wield or will the respect and fear I’ve instilled make you offer it up.”  
  
His pet curled into his side having only felt his weight settle on the bed and moved instinctively towards it. Dead asleep when the older shinigami is going to need him to wake up and spill his guts pronto.  
  
Their conversations were always very limited in scope because that sharp mind could gain too much knowledge from deeper conversations. Ryuk kept things this way and physically punished Light for getting too nosy or asking too many questions. 

 

The former human knew which topics and questions were off limits. He kept things breezy, or sexy, ironically, as his human ex-fiance had once had to do for him. Playing it off as if his inquiring mind was only cared to know the most limited of information - if Ryuk had liked the leather pants he had fixed up for him or the juiciest looking apple he’d saved for him. The closest Light came to mentally challenging him was showing his master while sticking his tongue out that he’d beat his Tetris score on the 3DS. Ryuk had figured entertainment that wasn't entirely reminiscent of the human world would be safe to share with his pet.  
  
Easy conversations for years, but this was something which had necessitated a difficult one.  
  
“Light.” He tamps down his demonic desire to punch his pet in the stomach until he coughs up both blood and the name of whomever had the gall to step into his home today. He drank in Light’s familiar sleepy smirk allowing himself to be pulled down for a peck on his large chin. Normally he’d have rocked his lover back to sleep for making this sort of low energy bid for his attention. Instead he went straight to what was on his mind, “It seems you have disobeyed me again. Don’t you dare tell me I’m wrong.”  
  
The other shinigami jolts into a sitting position while wrapped up in his furs just a fraction too quickly, and says, “What are you talking about?”  
  
Ryuk has to remind himself again that hurting Light for information is the last thing he should do given the options for healing him are running dry. So he decides to go with a verbally threatening approach, “How clever pretending to have slept your day away but if you don’t tell me who was in my house today; I might be forced to hurt you. You know I hate it when you do dumb things and force me to punish you.” He pulls Light into his arms and settles his talons at the back just above his kidneys, “Tell me quickly now, what all happened.”  
  
Light quickly tears up looking genuinely surprised and confused, “Master, please. Is this some kind of game?”  
  
Ryuk has no patience for obvious ploys, “You know full well it’s not.” He pushes down against the skin reminding Light of the damage he can do to him  
  
Light cries out with fear, having known the pierce of those talons when he’s disobeyed Ryuk before, and pleads, “I didn’t do anything wrong!”  
  
Now that, that sounded genuine. Ryuk calms a bit, “Disrobe.”  
  
Light does with his ruby claws trembling, revealing his body to his master slowly. Ryuk flips him onto his back and spreads his ass apart to find Light has not removed the butt plug yet that he’d lodged inside him after fucking him over a day back. Normally he’d commend him for training himself without Ryuk telling him to. But he can’t praise him right now; he yanks the plug out harshly and brings it to his nose, smells his own dried cum and the some of the proof Light’s remaining half-humanity of a working gastrointestinal system.  
  
He breathes in deeply again, “So they didn’t touch you here but that’s not the only part of you which belongs to me. They had better not have touched you anywhere else either.”  
  
“Master… There was no-”  
  
“Shut it, stay still you liar, or you’ll be cleaning this with your mouth.” Light gags at the threat knowing exactly what that tastes like and went silent and frozen, “Mm hm. That’s what I thought.”  
  
He lets himself feed his demonic instinct to completely own his pet, smelling all over his body only to find Light's natural scent so heavily commingled with his own that it should have sent a very strong message to any other demon interested that this comely creature was actively _taken_.  
  
Maybe Ryuk is being paranoid, he isn’t always right about his suspicions, he can admit that fault to himself easily. He takes no pride in having an infallible intellect. His pride is in more tangible prizes, the enviable things he has come through a combination of gambling and sheer dumb luck to own. 

He chuckles and dives in for an appropriate kiss to let Light know this test has been passed with flying colors, but as he lowers his own face to his half-brother’s an unmistakable scent wafts up. He smells orchids and roses again and the clean raw power sparks across his flat nostrils and the scent memory solidifies, he recalls he has encountered another similar scent and charge in the atmosphere before.  
  
He’d run into the guardian angel of a spiritually strong young priest on earth while he was haunting Light. He'd told the heavenly creature that it should really cool it on the flowers. The wing winged creature had not spoken back to him. Above him in rank as it obviously believed it was though Ryuk could have rended it in two.  
   
He pulls back hissing and dangerously angry at this deceit. He wraps one hand around Light's neck, his fingers overlap as he lightly squeezes, “Someone other than myself has touched you today - I can fucking smell them on you. Someone came here, didn't they boy? Did this someone have white wings?”  
  
Light's eyes go far too wide, there, jackpot, “An angel in this realm! Ha, that’s really slumming it for those types. It’s not alright you have lied to me but answer me fully now and your punishment may be less severe. What was it here for?”  
  
“Master, I’d thought I imagined it, please let go of me I’ll explain,” Light squeaked while being held tight at the throat. Ryuk let go and backed off to allow Light to answer him. “The angel was… he looked something like me - I mean he was about as tall. He didn’t say what or who he was. He was babbling. Saying something like that he had come here to see what had happened to me and that he wanted to do something about it but that he couldn’t do anything for me. That’s all that happened. I thought he was mad. He sounded crazy. He was here for a couple minutes, maybe. I didn’t know he would kiss my cheek,” Ryuk actually snarled, Light was going to pay later for sharing himself even in a small way, “but it’s all that happened I swear, I swear it to you Master. I didn’t want you to know because I knew you would,” Light heaves a dry sobbing sound between his breathless confession, “be so angry, that maybe you’d stop protecting me from the outside world and I know I belong to you so please, please no matter what happens. You don’t abandon me.”  
  
That Light’s entire sense of reality has been reconstructed on Ryuk’s lies is clear in this moment, “I am angry Light.” His tone promises pain to come and makes Light shake with the memories of exactly how cruel his master can prove to be at times, “How many times have I told I can’t protect you when you don’t do what I say-“  
  
“I DO do as you say!” Light appeared to be barely holding back tears, “I only thought he’d needed directions, he looked harmless, no fangs or claws on him, I never-“  
  
“I will not abandon you over this but only because it is the first time you have ever made this mistake. You will not make it again. Also, you must understand that an angel is more problematic for you as a demon than your even being found here by another shinigami. You need to tell me everything that happened between this visitor and yourself.”  
  
And Light looked upset and confused by this demand, “Ryuk that really is everything that happened. I swear to you I-“  
  
Ryuk struck him in the chest in spite of himself knocking the air out of the former human. Light took a ragged gasp inwards and a few hot tears fall down.   
  
What a stupid, insulting lie. How could that possibly be everything the halfling had to say? He hadn't even said what the angel looked like yet. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “No one's gonna save you  
> Use you up and break you  
> I'm the one you pray to every night 'cause you're mine” - Phantogram, Mine
> 
> Light and Ryuk have to travel to find help. And it has a cost and a time frame.

Ryuk was sounding as worried as Light had ever heard him, “It’s not enough to fix anything… damn it, what have I done.”  
  
Light had the distinct sensation of being disconnected from his body. Of viewing it from above as Ryuk smacked his face lightly with an open palm for the umpteenth time to try and keep him awake. His was aware, only distantly, that his pain was slowly being replaced by cold and numbness. Dark blood was visible seeping out of his left side while his master was wrapping the open wound tighter in bandages.  
  
It’s the first time his master has done something this extreme to him, torn into his side like this - though Ryuk’s temper could get away from him; the severity of the blows he had dealt Light in the past were far different. The healing potion his master had dumped into his mouth had only partially healed the damage he’d made while interrogating Light about the intruder.  
  
To start out with his master had hit him once. Hard enough to take his breath away. Light had not relented with more information at that time because the violence would only escalate further. His suspicions had of course been correct. He knew the other shinigami that well by now to know that the worst news he might share with him was that he had been compromised by someone else. Ryuk's obsession with knowing Light was loyal was something that shaped his demeanor towards the man. Light had once merely commented that a picture on the front of one of Ryuk's books in the shinigami language showed a handsome demon and he had proceeded to spend an entire day with his legs chained apart, getting whipped with a cat of nine tails for suggested he might even look at a fictional other with lust. Ryuk's temper was always set to explode, it was like a landmine.

When Ryuk started punching him in the stomach, each time attempting to draw a different part of Light’s confession; Light could barely recognize his master as he seemed to put together the pieces in order to draw a conclusion that made him angrier than Light had ever seen him, he had actually been foaming at the mouth. Spittle forming as he demanded more details and specks of it had been flying off his thick lips onto Light's chest and face.  
  
Light had told Ryuk everything he knew by the end of this torture. Described the dark-eyed winged creature’s every identifying feature and quality. Had explained his threat to return. He had even told Ryuk that the angel had asked for Light to wait for him and said he'd implied that somehow in the past they had known each other.  
  
And it was at the admission of information they had supposedly known each other that Ryuk had dug his talons into Light’s back as he cussed and said things in a language that Light didn’t fully understand, “That skinny _human!?_ How is he already tribunal material at this stage? Of all the bum luck.”  
  
Now here in the bedroom, Ryuk continues to lament what his violence has done to his pet, “Stay with me. You did this to me. I wasn’t thinking straight… I can’t lose you.”  
  
And he gathers Light bridal style in his arms and for the first time, they leave Ryuk’s home together.

* * *

  
When Light wakes up again the wounds are healed over - the way healing potions make them just enough- the quick regeneration of skin and bone at first leave fragile equivalents which ache and smart terribly, as well as being prone to tear open at the slightest provocation, so Light is still far from being alright.  
  
A much different reality is unfolding before his open eyes. He is in an enormous opulent wooden library on a cot under a down comforter. In a corner he hears his master speaking in a darker sounding tongue than the one he shares with Light, with another creature who speaks it in an almost refined way - it’s the shinigami language which Light barely knows.  
  
Light can make out what words he’s learned from Ryuk’s talking to himself in their home. When his master was expressing his pleasure during sex he would also almost exclusively speak in this same fear-inducing language. And every now and again he would teach Light a few words and laugh wholeheartedly as he tried to effect some of the rumbling sounds, telling him he sounded like an angry cat, whatever that was.  
  
“My Pet… healed… keep him safe… yes.”Ryuk is talking about him. He can make out only these words in a long few sentences.  
  
“Powerless shinigami… powerless… payment alright.” The other is saying something like that. Light wants to sit up and look to the other party but he can’t right now. His tiredness combined with his aching form like a physical weight upon his chest.  
  
He heard Ryuk rush over to him in flight before he saw him floating above him; both eyes trained on his face which for his master show that he is only focused on Light, “You’re awake. Thank Chaos. I’m sorry Light.”  
  
Light can’t remember Ryuk apologizing to him before. Ever. At least not for something like this, something real, “Where are we?” He says still hoarse from coughing up so much blood, rubbing his forehead and feeling his sweat-slicked dirty hair.

  
“I’ll be the one to answer that,” The other party chimes in, jangling with metal sounds as it lumbers forward, “This is my corner of our expansive realm. I am the answer god, and a fellow shinigami, halfling.”  
  
Light goes ahead and tries to sit up. Ryuk practically face-palms audibly that his pet is always in such a hurry to thoughtlessly hurt himself and shoves his shoulders against the cot.  
  
“I'd meant to introduce myself,” Light whines, looking up at him.

 

“There's no need to struggle to greet him. Justin knows you are here. He knows who you are,” Ryuk is using his ‘I am not to be questioned’ tone, "Probably better than you do."  
  
“Such a proper thing to want to greet the hired help of your master, Light. Ryuk, you should have introduced our youngest brother sooner; I almost believe I’m charmed by him.”  
  
“Don’t be. We've been friends longer than the realms have had common names, but I don’t care about your ranking enough to tolerate it.”  
  
“I can’t help but look at him though - when his existence explains so well why you’ve been working diligently on increasing your rank these past few years. We’d all noticed the departure from your prior stalwart commitment to a career of laziness.”  
  
“Hardy har har Beyondormason - I’ll surpass you yet. I have the king's blood. Don't forget that.”  
  
“Perhaps you will as it seems I’ve underestimated you in multiple ways.”  
  
“Now that I’ve offered you this payment you want to flatter me. Imagine, all your books, research and years on me and somehow I know things you don’t. What a universe.”  
  
“It is said the wise come to know that they know nothing.” Justin opines.  
  
“Then neither of us are. You are by far the most pedantic prick I’ve ever known. And since I definitely know enough to impress you - I would say we both possess enough knowledge to be considered unwise.”  
  
They both laugh at that. Light feels uncomfortable; there’s not a hint of friendliness within either sound.  
  
“Beyondorsmason leave me with him alone for an hour. I will need to say goodbye.”  
  
“Goodbye!?” Light squeaks.  
  
“Certainly,” Justin obliges, and the jangling sounds echo in the cavernous hall as he walks away.  
  
“Light,” Ryuk says, floating over him, “How do you feel?”  
  
“You’re leaving me?” Light’s voice nearly breaks; he doesn’t answer Ryuk fully because how he feels now is hardly important if Ryuk is leaving him at the mercy of a total stranger.  
  
“No, I told you I won’t leave you over the Angel. I have to find a better way to protect you now. So I’ll be petitioning the lowest realm for an exchange.”  
  
“What does that mean?”  
  
“I won’t insult your intelligence, but you won’t really understand,” And for the first time in memory, Ryuk really answers this sort of question for Light, “I happen to have found some things satanic demons are known to have a predilection for. I’m going to trade them for certain types of potions that when infused in the blood can bestow demonic power. Light, you know why I have to keep you hidden, you are barely a shinigami. You too bleed easily - so much so that you nearly died today. You will accept the infusion - and regardless of what it makes of you I will still be your partner. I’ve been stubborn. You staying this lovely has been my priority. Or I thought it was until you nearly died because I did something to you I could do a million times to a true shinigami without any lasting ill effects.”  
  
“What it… makes of me?”  
  
“I can’t know. But you are mine; that will not change.”  
  
“Why change me? I like how we are now.”  
  
Ryuk laughs at that, peels of laughter. There’s something ironic shaking out in his tone. A quality that appears in his laugh whenever Light conveys to his master that he is perfectly happy in the little world they inhabit together… as if eating a croissant out of his hand while playing video games, organizing his collections of weird curio treasures, waiting with anticipation for how Ryuk might surprise him or play with him, endless nights and days of pleasure - as if all of that was something suspect to his master.  
  
“I know you do. Never forget you are mine. That angel will exist to regret he ever touched my fondest possession. That he dared to threaten to take you away from me and that he ever set this all into motion.”  
  
Light shakes his head annoyed with himself. Why had he admitted that much and so much more to his master? He was at fault for Ryuk leaving him now, his master who owned him and took care of him, leaving him in a foreign place with someone who sounded like they didn't even like Ryuk. If they didn't like Ryuk, how could they be relied on to help Light?  
  
“Justin is as honest as demons come. We’ve made a deal. He will honor it," And Ryuk is serious when he forbids Light the following, though the warning makes little sense to his pet, "Don’t you dare come on to him if you get, lonely. This isn't playtime. Be careful - you are not my mate you are my pet. You don't understand the difference but you should never offer yourself to him. He’s good for a shinigami - but not a one of us are above reproach.”  
  
“What!? Why would I ever!?” Light sputters.  
  
“Light, my pretty liar, my visit to the lowest realm could take months. You’ve prioritized your immediate needs in your past. It’s before you can remember but…” Ryuk licks his shark teeth for emphasis, “If you do it while I am gone I will not protect you anymore.”  
  
“I don’t know how I acted before I lost my memories, I know you say I wasn't loyal enough to you back then, and though you never seem to believe me, I swear I am yours now. Only yours. I say it everyday to you! Don't I!” Light does reach up for Ryuk then, because he wants to show him his so-called ‘needs’ are centered on the larger shinigami.  
  
Ryuk leans down for a long kiss, then pulls away barely so his warm breath is on Light’s face as he judges, searching his brown eyes, “Sincerity, unfortunately, doesn’t have a taste or smell.”  
  
“Then show me how I can prove to you, I am yours,” Light whispers, “That you make me happy, you give me everything I want.”  
  
“How you behave while I am gone will be the best way for you to prove it to me. Promise me loyalty and wait for me patiently. Listen to Justin but don't endear yourself to him too much, keep your distance. Can you do that for me?”  
  
“You didn’t need to ask.”

“Mm,” Ryuk observes Light kissing his hand subserviently then gnawing at his large, impenetrable index finger with his adorable fangs before licking the tip suggestively. “Damn, pet. Do you never stop? Keep acting like that and I’ll mark you with my saliva, sweat and come before I leave here," And when Light sucks the digit harder, Ryuk groans, "When you are all banged up you still want this? I'll have to be so gentle that it irritates me. It makes me laugh at myself that I have fallen for something as fragile as you. You will be the end of us both.”  
  
“I won’t be, “ He says as Ryuk pulls his black pants down around his ankles, “I swear. I will be worth all this trouble to you.”  
  
“There he is, my over-confident Light Yagami. Fine then,” Ryuk said,“If we're going to do this here, let’s make that haughty old man outside have to think about how gorgeous you sound when you moan and scream for me. The louder; the better.”  
  
They end up breaking the weak support of the cot apart and even reopening a couple of Light’s smaller wounds. They don’t really say goodbye. Instead, Ryuk plucked a feather from his wing and placed it behind Light’s ear before flying away wordlessly.

* * *

  
  
Justin Armonia returns to find Light alone on the floor wrapped in a slightly bloodied blanket, rocking back and forth slowly and brushing the downy softness of the black feather across his lips sentimentally.  
  
The jewels in Justin’s golden skeleton face and the large diamonds set into his eyes twinkle back and forth in an array across Light’s amber eyes, the shinigami drawls, “Up off my floor, you. You've made a wreck of my cot for the ailing. Why does this not shock me? Ryuk’s always been impulsive. I suppose you would be as well." Light sniffles at him and stays where he is, feeling too sad to respond, "Quickly now. This is not the hour for your sorrow, Light Yagami - you should be truly relieved, you’ll be freer here in my home than in that mismanaged hovel Ryuk owns. Don’t be afraid of me. I won’t go against my word to another shinigami. Even if he is an unbelievable idiot. I don’t have the kind of particular interest in you which you seem to be most accustomed to. I’ll show you where to get cleaned up, young one." Light remains unmoved, "Come on now. Get up. If you had the energy for whatever blasphemous thing you and he were up to a few minutes back you are most capable of a half mile walk with me. Up! Up!" Light scrambles up and tucks Ryuk's feather back behind his ear, and Justin mutters as he leads the way, "You have much to learn about what you are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I believe I wrote that Light has Stockholm syndrome but I don't know that it's clear how badly he suffers it until this and the upcoming chapters.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryuk's thoughts as he sets off to the lowest realm to get a real option for Light to gain power enough to fend for himself as a shinigami and to find out how to deal with trifling angels encroaching on his territory.

It had always been said, the only way to kill a shinigami was to make them fall in love with a mortal.  
  
  
That was said by gullible creatures. It was good that so many believed it.  
  
  
Lower demon realms often thought the shinigami impossible to kill.  
  
  
Unfortunately, there were plenty of ways to send Death Gods off their immortal coil into Mu.  
  
  
If there weren't, hundreds of shinigami would still exist within the shingami realm..  
  
  
But Ryuk knew by now, certainly, the most dramatic way to kill a god of death was still that mythic love: to pierce it through the heart with a perfect white smile and a pretty laugh.  
  
  
He'd nearly experienced it when Light Yagami had been on Earth. Had caught himself. Stepped back and tried to laugh it off. He would know.  
  
  
Ryuk had been sure he was immune once upon a time.  
  
  
He has known that love was not a weakness he had even when he visited the human realm to seek amusement by giving any mortal a death note.  
  
  
At that time he hadn’t been worried for himself in the least. Sure he thought that humans were the best looking of the mortal species. So what? Lust was not such a gripping feeling.  
  
  
It was a confidence well earned because Ryuk had never loved anything… at all. Prior to… prior to him…  
  
  
Every time he thought of his pet it became impossible mute the thunder anymore - that the booming of invigorating emotion he feels towards his unnaturally emotive (for a shinigami) halfling can’t be summed up as him simply being possessive of a damn good lay.  
  
  
Gods, thank all the Gods the man had been damned in such an unusual way.  
  
  
Ryuk had been wary of Kira in life. The way Ryuk acted toward him lately, all the preferential treatment given to this creature, it would have rendered him to sawdust on earth. 

  
  
He was lucky he hadn't lashed out and killed any of the humans the man had slept with on earth. He realized that in retrospect but he had been able to tamp it all down back then. His own jealousy which dared not speak its name.

  
  
These mortal realms shinigami watched over, the creatures inhabiting them they could kill to extend their lifespans but love of all the emotions had been called off limits to the shinigami.  
  
  
Ryuk could desire humans all he wanted, could hate them, frame them, envy them, humiliate them, lust after them during their short lives.  
  
  
Only love was forbidden to the watchers.

 

Though lust presented its problems because it could not be acted upon nowadays; it wasn't a true killer of death gods.   
  
  
Lust without release had been the sort of internal conflict he’d grown accustomed to. Prior to Light falling into his hands, he had developed a self-control borne of thousands of years of sexual self-denial.  Permanent death was _kind of a boner killer_.  
  
  
There had been a time in the distant past, they'd been allowed to take mortals offered in sacrifice to death.   
  
  
But that jealous old overgrown troglodyte of a King had taken away even that from his subjects.  
  
  
It was a funny thing about being born any kind of demon though, how you always wanted the most what you couldn’t have.  
  
  
Even back when he could have fucked any mortal offered to appease the gods of death; he'd very rarely partaken. Since the time mortals had become completely off limits though, he must have desired more exceptional and different humans without their knowledge than ever. He'd wanted more than ever to fuck these magnificent short-lived beings until they fell apart. And in the wake of such dark fantasies left unanswered; he developed a dark sense of humor about the ones that caught his eye.  
  
  
Whenever he yearned for a partner, he would watch their life with great enthusiasm until he got bored with them because they were getting old or they had changed to become boring.  
  
  
Only that point, would he kill them himself.

 

Always in this complicated way, he could have them as his own for 23 days. Not really making them his, of course.   
  
  
But his in a loose sense he led their destinies and touched them in that way. Often he had chosen to murder them in a manner that would mentally scar everyone they had ever known. Just because he was that petty that he could only touch them in death. And just because it made him laugh. And laughing was better than feeling powerless.  
  
  
So, of course, he was going to have to make it memorable for those having caught his attention: a murder-suicide with a loved one in a famous public space, maybe cut themselves up in some fascinatingly unlikely way and bleed out to be found by a horrified stranger, maybe they’d opt for suicide by authorities, he was always thorough.

 

That was what they earned for catching his interest - a memorable death, one that gave people pause, always at least that much.  
  
  
He was a little bit sick in the head, the other shinigami would even tell him. His preference for comical deaths was hardly scandalous though. All the shinigami developed their ways of coping with the monotonous march of time.    
  
  
It wasn’t as if he had ever had any guidance or mentor. He didn’t grow up knowing his mother. He knew the Shinigami king had created him with some sort of female demon which was unusual but not exactly eyebrow-raising.

His old man now spent most of his time asleep in a barely visited throne room. According to legend (so according to what Justin Armonia Beyondormason claimed was a legend since only he bothered keeping records of their history anymore) at some point the King had nearly killed off all of the mortals in every realm in a great flood,he had also destroyed their societies.  
  
  
It seemed Ryuk’s father was going to coast on that stockpile of years forever.

 

Ryuk grew up like most shinigami, in their vast desert of bones he had some windows into the mortal worlds through the portals that dotted the land like oases to drink from. He'd heard rumors that the demons had societies and cities in the other realms - schools, families and jobs much like the mortal realms shinigami bestowed death too. As a child, he had been jealous that other demons might have anything like what went on in the strange little snowglobe worlds which shinigami pulled their years from afar to survive.   
  
  
He'd tried to make friends. He must have been born from some more sociable kind of demon. Ryuk had eventually decided other Shinigami made the dullest of companions; the only thing they could be reliably counted on for was another gambling round or a host of drinks and rotten fruit.  
  
  
Making Light respect his power now that he had no real memories had been almost too easy. It had changed him into what he was now though.  
  
  
Ryuk had to admit that was kind of incredible. Incredible that breaking Light in just the right way had proved to be no real challenge despite his exceptional intellect. Ryuk had maybe enjoyed every single aspect of Light before he died.  
  
  
He missed that man sometimes.  
  
  
Before Light was his, Ryuk had loved the way he lied with no compunction, the idiosyncrasies and his private wacky laughter about it; his compassionless manipulation of other humans.  
  
  
After Light was his, in his new form, he'd took every precaution to make sure Light's duplicitous ways didn't emerge from latency to someday ruin them both.  
  
  
Cautioning him against cheating on him though demons of any make were not meant much for fidelity. Not allowing him any expression of lust or desire for anyone save himself.

But again, he missed that man. In spite of how good he had it with Light now that he had practically no recollection of his past. Sometimes he’d muse about Light’s personas on earth - the star student, the good team member, the perfect boyfriend, the martyr for mankind, the conflicted and self-tortured gay man, the compulsory heterosexual, all had been splendidly convincing in their own ways. Every one of those personas built to be destroyed; without ever too much affecting their host. 

  
And sometimes as he lied to Light about their past together - he’d wonder, who, if anyone, Light had ever been. 

  
Wondered if Light himself had even known before Ryuk had pinned it down the answer for him with a black notebook and a better calling than 'future police officer'. Had Light even been Kira at his core, though?  
  
  
Honestly, probably not.   
  
  
The one thing Light consistently was - was needing of adoration. It was something Ryuk was certain by now he knew how to give just enough of, to keep Light hooked on him.  
  
  
But only one persona of Light’s was left to him now - and Ryuk sometimes was taken aback by sort of pit in his stomach feeling of a conviction that the creature curled around him (as though he was a massive security blanket or teddy bear) was less real than any of Light’s earthly interchangeable masks had been.  
  
  
A mask that could be taken off at any time to reveal the capable individual beneath it - who unlike his halfling amnesiac Light would not love him. Could never love him.

Light as his pet seemed nearly broken by his ownership; remade to Ryuk’s deepest desire to be needed. Clingy and codependent towards him. Imperfection was breaking apart Light's former perfection more and more all the time and he kept cracking away regardless.  
  
  
Ryuk didn't need perfect now that the grand show on earth was over. Ryuk needed loyal. He wanted to be wanted; he had that but feared Light would stray.  
  
  
He wouldn’t risk being driven to madness by his fears about the former human's fidelity though. He was trying to get himself to a place of easy dominance; because Light was going to one day be his mate. Things were going to work out. And the pathway to that honor was not through doubt. It was through making Light strong enough to fend off advancements from other demons and, Chaos help them both, Angels with a past.  
  
  
Long-term their relationship couldn’t be about keeping Light in some inescapable cage unseen by others - a mental connection with someone in extended anguish, or worse, fallen into psychosis was not the sort of partner a demon could claim as a mate.  
  
  
Ryuk was traveling to the lowest realm, where he could also be sent to Mu if he weren’t careful because he’d finally found something he was willing to die for.  
  
  
Love another being was a bane, he wanted so much; he never wanted something to the point it had become an insatiable appetite before. He'd have never done this if not for one driving thought: He'd be the winningest demon that ever existed if he could mate with Light Yagami.  
  
  
And forego the now horrific thought of losing him.  
  
  
He tried to consider when he'd first fallen this hard; when that the very idea of losing Light had become more painful to him than his own assured self-preservation.  
  
  
It was a night now about four years back. Long after Light had learned to wear his collar without complaint.  
  
  
When he'd taken the collar and set it aside for a night. Feeling that body-sick feeling which shinigami got when they accidentally consumed the years of a blessed, favored mortal. Priests, mystics and monks made for horrible meals.  
  
  
LIght had not often gone a night without sex since Ryuk had trained him in the art of pleasing his whims had been confused to be ignored.  
  
  
"Light-o," He'd asked to avoid concern, "you can go sleep in the other room. I'm going to lay here and wait for something to pass."  
  
  
"No I don't want to leave you like this. Not when you need me the most."  
  
  
"Light-o, there's nothing you can do to help me. Be a good pet and go... I don't know, play that DS I gave to ya."  
  
  
Light curled into him, a hard-on pressed to his side.  
  
  
"No. I'm going to make you forget you feel bad. I promise you."  
  
  
A little surprised to be taken advantage of when he felt too bad to move much, he cautioned, "Light that's an order."  
  
  
"Okay. I'll go. But let me try one thing first?"  
  
  
"Yeah, yeah whatever."   
  
  
Light pressed his mouth against Ryuk's neck in a kiss, then opened his mouth and bit down. Hard.  
  
  
The flesh still didn't break. Ryuk felt temporarily light headed until Light pulled away and looked at Ryuk with eyes shining brilliant gold.  
  
  
Ryuk was speechless. He didn't feel the poison of protected years surging through his old frame like it was trying to light him on fire from the inside out.  
  
  
Dark energy swirled in his mouth he gulped it down and then started sobbing, Light's fists clenched so hard his own talons were drawing blood from his palms.  
  
  
He swept over his pet, "You idiot what did you do?" He stopped himself from hitting the boy when seeing how bad he already felt.  
  
  
And Ryuk? Ryuk felt perfectly fine  
  
  
A shinigami who could steal years from other shinigami? He'd never heard of this power before.  
  
  
"How did you know that would work?" He questioned his pet.  
  
  
"I didn't. ARGH!" Light seized from the pain now working through his body instead, Ryuk held him steady until it abated.    
  
  
"I wanted to kiss you. Make you...agh.... feel better than something... I wanted to bite down."  
  
  
Ryuk tended to him in silence unsure how to react. He could feel that the supply of years sustaining him had only taken a tiny fraction of a hit. Almost like Light had sucked the poison out of him to deal with it himself.  
  
  
Finally, he said, "Light that is an _incredible_ power," Carefully he followed to test the waters, "So much so you might be able to go it on your own."  
  
  
Light teared up more, "No please don't talk like that. I only did this to help you. I can take the pain for you. Don't leave me"  
  
  
"Idiot. Little idiot." He'd said, "I won't leave you... I promise you."  
  
  
Light was sobbing, "How were you dealing with this quietly!? It burns _inside of me_."  
  
  
"Used to it. Now I'm the one who wants to sleep with ya but will have to wait. You really are an idiot you know. No option exists to take this kind of pain away you'll just have to burn through these years."  
  
  
That quiet plea from Light for him to stay was so naked and Ryuk's ponderous heart acted funny as it would nearly stop as Light soldiered through the pain for his sake.  



	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> L does what he's promised. Light doesn't know how to accept.
> 
>  
> 
> "Where you once were there is a space that runs as deep as hell  
> But every morning when I wake… I tell myself…”  
>  - Room For Happiness (ICE Mix) - Kaskade ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmUZnD61gA4 )

L steepled his fingers over elbows bent against his crouched knees and leaned his forehead into his palms, “Please, please, please tell me you did not just say _Justin Armonia Beyondormason_.”  
  
  
“It appeared ownership of the half-demon had been transferred to him and, yes, that very same shinigami, sir. He seemed like a nice fellow, you know, for a demon!”  
  
  
_Nice?_ L pinched the bridge of his nostrils, breathed in and tried not to exhale in a high-pitched, strained scream. “I’ll need you to leave the report on my desk. This is… good work.” He didn’t want anymore comments from the peanut gallery about the Shinigami Realm, “You have a half week off effective immediately Lati get yourself some rest.” L allowed, assuming the little creature had seen more alarming eyefuls of that voracious shinigami action he’d mentioned last they met about this topic.  
  
  
He fought the urge to burn the prints to save himself from the trauma but eventually started shuffling through the photos. To his extreme confusion, Light had on no collar on anymore, nor any other symbol he was enslaved by any other shinigami.  
  
  
He was now almost always pictured at the table in a metallic study room reading a tome half the size of himself next to smaller opened reference books and taking copious notes with a quill across sheets of parchment the while the golden skeleton reaper, Justin sat beside him in quiet camaraderie whilst writing or, less frequently, while he spoke with him with a dignified air as if elucidating a curiosity for him.  
  
  
In one photo, Light was out in an open area enclosed by the building on all four sides and swinging a metallic scythe around and laughing confidently, looking the happiest L seen him since he had been alive on Earth. Justin seemed to be advising him on stances and how to swing.  
  
  
He kept himself steeled for the inevitable pictures though as he thumbed, waiting for some indication of Light’s sexual favors to the more powerful being in exchange for this notable lifestyle upgrade.  
  
  
No such photo was in the 200 photo set. Just picture after picture of Light lounging around a gorgeous, winding metallic complex with a makeshift book bag like he was on a school campus, often with an expression of child-like wonder at the materials he was consuming and nearly always accompanied by the terrifying golden skeleton reaper. Who, if legend had it right, was inlaid top to bottom with the priceless jewels he’d taken from the corpses of his most historically notable kills.  
  
  
So Light Yagami was taking private classes from the shinigami for whom mortals had likely needed to coin the term, “cruel twist of fate…”  
  
  
Great. _Wasn’t that really great?  
  
_

Justin was an enormous threat which would not easily resolve itself. If Kira had, in his short life, brought death to violent criminals and Ryuk, upon closer inspection, administered darkly humorous deaths to unlucky randos; Justin was legendary for his meal of choice: destroying dynasties by ruining royal families, nobles, celebrities and elected officials. He cursed these mortals born into fortunate circumstance then killed them like it was his chaos-bound duty to do so.  
  
These were the kind of kills most shinigami avoided. Lucky mortals were too often protected and blessed by angels. But not Justin, he seemingly was unaffected by these pains.  
  
Chaos had favored him greatly. His cruel creative strategizing for bringing death to the powerful, blessed individuals across all the mortal worlds had allowed him to achieve a shinigami rank that only one other had ever held. It would have taken an army of archangels to match him if a battle were to occur.  
  
It could occur. All L would have to do was act as informant that a still mostly human Kira was being held by the Death God. A unit would be assembled by the angelic tribunal to take Light away. So that heaven could see that Light Yagami’s fate had ended according to their laws and not there in the wild west of the shinigami realm.  
  
Had Beyondormason done something to Ryuk and taken Light Yagami for his own? But… then not continued to use the halfing as a bedwarmer?  
  
  
Demons didn’t operate like that. They didn’t show kindness without very good reason, they took whatever was theirs to take.  
  
  
So unless Justin was some sort of one-off asexual tutor demon of death… L had to assume that Ryuk, while not in any of the pictures Lati had given him today, was still involved with Light.  
  
  
Justin though. Really? _Justin Armonia Beyondormason._ He suppressed an involuntary shudder. Ranking in the 2nd tier of power he was a main player shinigami. L had amassed research on the major threats in the shinigami realm when he’d originally been on lookout out for what role Kira had assumed after becoming a shinigami. The answer god’s power was only outmatched by the terror angel of Death, Nu, and after that, by many magnitudes, by the mostly inactive Shinigami King, curled into his ball of chains and bones.  
  
  
L had promised he could defeat Ryuk in battle if need be when he came back for Light, and, he hadn’t been kidding, if he could have only figured out… where exactly to take Light after they’d escaped; he’d have already gone back for him and taken him from that useless clown by now.  
  
  
Such a battle would have been dangerous, no doubt. Ryuk had seemed slightly more powerful than he’d read in the files about the shinigami. But most of his powers had been catalogued for him neatly by the sprites that did field studies on the realm. Ryuk had been nothing a decent holy weapon of the heavenly reserve couldn’t burn out.  
  
  
But a rank 2 Death God getting involved? It was a powerful disincentive for him to act. Justin was estimated to be as powerful as an infinity wing seraphim; the type mortals couldn’t look upon without instantly going insane. In simpler terms, Justin Armonia could probably fry an archangel like L up and serve his wings to Light, who still probably didn’t know who L was, as dinner.  
  
  
He was trying to remember Justin’s primary powers. He pulled up the log on his computer about the skeleton creature.  
  
  
“The Shinigami Answer God  
**Justin Armonia Beyondormason**  
  
INFANTRY TO APPROACH DEMON ONLY WHEN UNTRACEABLY CONCEALED.  
  
RANK 2  
  
DANGEROUS CHAOTIC ENTITY  
  
Known Threats:  
Unbreakable Cursework  
Necrotizing Metal Scythe  
Demonic Possession Through Telepathy  
Reality Distortion  
Dimension Shift  
Wither - Planetary  
Wither - Localized  
….”  
  
  
The list didn’t end there, it was exhaustive, detailing for three pages these powers and each instance could be clicked on to read and learn find the recordings of any poor souls who'd suffered effects firsthand. Over the countless years of angelic record it seemed that nearly anyone sent to the shinigami realm to deal with him, before the truce, had been highly likely to come back cursed to suffer such unending indignities and bodily horrors that the kindest thing had been to send them to Mu. By the time L was finished informing himself of the cruel power this death god wielded, he slumped out of his crouch and back into his chair into a defeated sprawl.  
  
  
Only later, sipping on a mango tapioca pudding drink from his fridge did it hit him how to help Light Yagami escape a demon whom neither of them had any business facing down.  
  
  
The Valhalla District Reserve Armory had a mirrored holy weapon that, when wielded properly, reflected all dark magic back at the user. It was a long shot but Justin preferred to start with curse work such that it was the first power mentioned and had far more recorded instances than all the rest….  
  
  
Ideally if he tried anything he'd end up permanently cursing himself instead.  
  
  
It wasn’t a failsafe approach. But now L had only two steps more before he could go make an attempt to save Light from his captor. Securing that weapon and figuring out where to hide his doomed old friend and enemy that wouldn’t just be that much worse than before.

* * *

Sometimes pausing to consider how crazy this plan was, what he stood to lose by trying it if he were found battled with his strong logical inclinations to wait for something more foolproof.  
  
  
L examined again the floor plan of the abandoned part of the armory in central, much of it fallen into disrepair. The heavens had reached an uneasy but lasting peace with the lower realms a millennia ago. The reserves didn’t maintain any of the weaponry anymore but upper floors above these abandoned white marble catacombs house a babel’s library worth of documents on every mortal of some note. So he had to be careful not to alert the librarians to his digging.  
  
  
He’d need Light’s file too. He somehow doubted, even at the rank he was, that he’d been privy to all information that heaven had on the man. He found the hexagonal area on the map where he could find unresolved cases of karma. That made things easier. Had Light been any normal person, he would have been looking at toiling away a hundred years to find the area that his file ever might have been. But unresolved karmic balance was not common.  
  
  
  
Back home, on his own desk, taped to his wall, was the picture that most motivated him to complete this insane operation. In spite of the way it jeopardized his position in the heavenly order. In spite of a reality twisting Death God guarding his target. That picture of Light looking at himself in a mirror away from the shinigami who had twisted the chain in his hand attached to the thick brown collar that sat snug around his neck, his eyes looking devoid and emptied of all motivation.  
  
  
L wasn’t one to cry. But sometimes looking at Light in that photograph, broken and used without any will to fight back anymore, his face would get wet.  
  
  
He remembered the year before his death. Hours of prolonged agony for a moment alone between himself and Light, the way he used to be.  
  
  
Away from the cameras, L himself had imposed upon the two of them during the case. Proud, self-protect laughter from his suspect as they leaned their heads together in bed, at first figuratively, then later very literally.  
  
  
All the misdirects, their in-fighting, their collapsing, maybe on purpose, into one another's traps and tricks. And Light’s surprising sweetness when a kiss was taken because words no longer sufficed. Then when another was granted to him. As much as he could feel the tension between them,  L had never-the-less been shocked to have the 19 year old tennis star and academic prodigy unwrap him and try his out like he had been his birthday, Christmas and graduation present all wrapped into one.  
  
  
It wasn’t just their sex. It was the way they had meshed so well that it had made L think crazy, sappy things like that maybe he could finally believe in love songs. This comfortable feeling between them like they’d been cut from the same cloth, when every second up until their minds had met in a clash of conversation, they’d both felt surrounded but always alone.  
  
  
And Light’s face. His face had been an endless labyrinth and puzzling distraction and obsession for L. Everything was concealed from him in that gorgeous expressive face, that gave everything and nothing away and sometimes there was only fire, sharp intellect in his amber eyes. L lived for glimpses of that man. The one behind the mask of gentility. He’d argue with Light just to watch his soft-spoken but powerful convictions take hold so his righteousness gave gravity to every carefully selected word of his refutations.  
  
  
But there? In that disgusting piece of evidence. The man who had once shown him that intimacy could be a spiritual, out of body experience. The person with whom he'd believed love was possible -  who had made him feel at first finally human then otherworldly. This man who'd concealed the cleansing flames behind his irises ready to burn out all the nonbelievers. Kira, Light Yagami, _his Light-kun_. In that photo, that man had been destroyed.  
  
  
He’d been faded out and fading further, disappearing into a new, helpless identity. He moved easily with his slave-holder obviously unaware he’d once been an idealist who’d, genuinely, successfully changed his whole world. Unaware that thing didn’t deserve to _be anywhere near_ him let alone _touch him_.  
  
  
So even if Light could smile a little now? L didn’t care. The shinigami could obviously not be trusted with him.  
  
  
He’d kissed the man on the cheek to see him again. He felt embarrassed by that now. Light used to kisses he hadn’t initiated had readily accepted it. Held his face after like it was a wondrous experience.  
  
  
At worst, a Kira with all his memories in tact had likely deserved Mu. L would have told himself Light Yagami who had killed so many people so callously deserved that fate. That it would have been appropriate justice; the same as anyone else who’d badly messed up in their judgment within their mortal lifetime, no reincarnations granted. Instead Light had gotten years of a fate that made L’s stomach turn; one that woke him up at night and sent him to the bathroom to vomit. He’d been changed and degraded beyond L’s comprehension. Calling some clownish skullfucker _his master_ and living in a hove of a cavern with it.  
  
  
Now things had to be righted. And no one else but him was going to right them in a way that wouldn’t punish an abused, traumatized and amnesiac Light Yagami further.

* * *

 “No. No no. Please, fuck no.”  
  
He scanned the tribunal’s file on Light Yagami then sped read it again and again. Eyes flashing between words. Frantic as he’d perhaps hallucinated them.  
  
Not only had the council elders known what had happened to Kira after his death. They had not guided his passage into Mu. They hadn't even tried. They’d arranged for it to all go to hell for themselves.   
  
Angels were not, after all, supposed to hurt other beings unless they were a direct threat to their immortality.   
  
“Their species' cruelty is legendary among the races of demons. They do not well propogate - their tendency to demand mortal sacrifice then kill any offspring begotten of these pairings has been addressed by cursing mortal owners of the death note to at times not come to judgment but instead be rebirthed as new shingami. Shinigami have been banned from taking non-shinigami partners by their King and this is now the only method by which new shinigami come to exist. Rebirthed as monsters; they retain only the impression of having lived before. But even this method has not addressed their dwindling population as green shinigami are often murdered. They are self-indulgent and destructive creatures who exist to maim and destroy all sentient lifeforms. It is for these reasons that we believe letting Kira be reborn as an incomplete shinigami will be an effective punishment. A false idol upon the Earth will pay for his sins because of the method he attained false blessings. Demonic mercenaries have been paid to carry out the task of an experiment-”  
  
The next few sentences had been redacted even from this secret record.  
  
In the middle of the file, a stand-out paragraph made him shake with rage,  
  
“The shingamis’ physical torture of a lesser being born amongst them result in any of them creating a soul binding with subject Light Yagami - Procedure to nullify ‘Lawliet, L’ must engage immediately.   
  
Subject and L Lawliet are known to have consummated a relationship in life. The tribunal have reason to believe L Lawliet has remained in pursuit of the subject. Heaven must take all precautions to make sure an archangel does not fall under the power of any demon, shinigami or dark artifact. The unit assigned to take out L Lawliet will do so with complete discretion.  Painlessly disposed of to MU.”

* * *

  
“Awww poor little serial killer got taken over by a shinigami as its sex slave? Hold up Matt. I think I just came up with a theme song for Kira the Dick Sucker.”  
  
“Don’t.” L warned the two of them. After they has busted into his apartment with a bottle of champagne like they had arrived to celebrate. Then the second the door was closed behind him started to interrogate him about what kind of cool mission he’d been secretly preparing for and, oh, could they please join.  
  
When he’d explained why, in very firm words, they needed to keep their nosey mouths shut… he’d gotten, somwhat understandably, a pretty bad response.  
  
Mihael stopped eating his chocolate bar and started sarcastically rapping while Matt kept a beat, “Slob on my knob, like corn on the cob. Check-in with me and do your-.”  
  
L lost his patience immediately, all four of his wings tensed tight in anger, “I WILL HAVE YOU BOTH DEMOTED!”  
  
“Wow. L _can_ lose his cool! We’re one-wings. If you demote us we won’t even be here, and you wouldn’t do that, L, not to us. Anyhow, preppy tragedy pansy killed all three of us. Who CARES what became of him after that. Matt, back me up here bruh?”  
  
  
Matt restarted with the percussion back up for the Easy-E song, feigned some DJ scratching movements and rolled his eyes at the very idea of any of them caring for Light Yagami’s well being in purportedly horrific circumstances.  
  
  
“This was none of your business in the first place.” L reiterated.  
  
“Oh right, okay, we TOTALLY see how you absconding with a forbidden weapon might be none of our business. Sure. But? Doing late night recognizance research in your home to the point it’s EASY to trace you because you are so tired you’re becoming sloppy and leaving your shit out like everywhere all over your apartment and we aren’t, you know, as your friends, going to clue you in!?”  
  
  
“MELLO AND MATT, WHY ARE COMING INTO MY APARTMENT WHEN I’M NOT HERE!? So what do you both plan to do about it?”  
  
  
“‘Well first, back to that first thing, see, we know your workplace in Valhalla Justice Division gives you guys killer snacks and your fridge is always fully stocked. Oh man, how are you a detective again, like,  where did you think all your chocolate had been going?”  
  
  
He'd thought he’d been eating it in his dazed night binges, but he said , “I allot my mental resources to matters other than food.”  
  
  
“Well! You see, it’s good we do swing by occasionally-“  
  
  
“All the time.” Matt corrected his partner.  
  
  
“So  that we do get a beat on when you are TRYING TO GET YOURSELF KILLED. Here we are to say  _knock that shit off_. Though maybe keep the holy weapon, we’d gotten some sick ideas about where to hide it and as far as we could tell the only ones tailing you. So forget about that shit stain. Right, Matt?”  
  
  
“ _Right_.”  
  
  
“You two don’t understand. It’s that Light Yagami… Light is…”  
  
  
“An ugly murderer?” Matt said, and mimed the DJ record scratching motion again. Mello snorted his approval.  
  
  
“Yes, and he's my only unresolved case.”  
  
  
“Sure, it sucks that you couldn’t wrap that one up while you were alive, one man scooby gang that you were, but why don’t you just fucking let it go… stay here in Valhalla District? You have it pretty good _now. What do you need to stay hung up on him for?_ ”  
  
  
“Mello, Matt, try to follow me here. Light Yagami is a weak shinigami and the captive of other more powerful shinigami.”  
  
  
“Okay.” Matt indicated that they were both reluctantly listening even as he dug some contraband chewing tobacco in a tin out of his black messenger bag.  
  
  
“Demons perform blood rites binding doomed souls to dark magic artifacts… or, much less commonly, _to themselves_.”  
  
  
“See? That’s why you don’t fuck around with demons. So you don’t ‘bad end’ stuck inside like… the scented candle in Satan’s Outhouse!” Mello cried, flinging his hands into the air wildly. A little bit of a hypocritical thing to say since he’d been haunted by the shinigami Shidou for a bit himself.  
  
  
“Tell me something.” L said and reached down below his desk quickly he dug through his photos and held up a picture of Light Yagami in his changed body perched shirtless upon a winding metal staircase looking off listlessly into the red and brown desert wasteland in the distance, gnawing at his bottom pink lip with one fang, “Try to forget everything you know about Light Yagami. If you are a demon; and you had access to this man… what would you do with him?”  
  
  
“Holy Mother of Mercy. Christ on a CROSSS. That incubus we thought you had up for your spank bank! Is that _what Kira looks like now?_ ” Mello was getting red in the face and showing his Catholic side in a flustered moment. Matt sighed into his hands at the familiar nuisance of Mihael’s wandering eye.  
  
  
_“He’s not an incubus._ What would Mello do with him _if he were a demon?_ ” L reiterated.  
  
  
“Woo him. Just kidding. He'd fuck his brains out.” Mail concluded in his typically terse fashion, smacking the chewing tobacco loudly. And Mihael turned to him to give a crazily large-eyed betrayed and shocked look while Mail readjusted the messenger pack onto the side of his back that had no wing.  
  
  
“That would mean I would be drawn then, instead of towards helping Light Yagami getting out of this mess, towards undoing an impossibly complicated kind of magic.”  
  
  
“Oh my god WHY? Why would you even care.” Mello groaned.  
  
  
“Because he is my last case. Because I didn’t save him from himself when I could have.”  
  
  
“This isn’t your fault, L. HE GAVE YOU A HEART ATTACK! HE KILLED ME IN A CONFLAGRATION! HE SHOT MATT….”  
  
  
“Takada’s bodyguards-“ Matt started to correct him.  
  
  
“HE SHOT MATT BY PROXY!” Mello said and then ate a huge chunk of his chocolate bar, smacking wildly.  
  
  
“Yes. I could and would deny myself my desire to see him again forever; he did do all that… But not everyone knows that I would opt out and therein lies the problem of not acting.” He continued when both L and Matt looked at him like he'd lost his mind, “When I collected the broadsword of reflection in central, I also searched for, and found, internal documents about the Valhalla District's unsolved karmic cases. If Light Yagami gets bound to a dark artifact or to a shinigami, the tribunal intends to dispose of me to mitigate the risk I might still go to him one day anyway.”  
  
  
“You tell them then. Just go tell them you don’t care about him!”  
  
  
“What is the use of lying to liars? They are right to suspect it and they've already probably word from my co-workers I'd done massive investigation into the shinigami realm. I’ve never been very good at stopping myself from doing whatever it is I want.”  
  
  
Mello and Matt share a meaningful look knowing they are both thinking of L who, at the last heavenly function for community leaders, had been pictured in the Valhalla district newspaper essentially face-fucking half a Boston Creme Pie that he’d plopped onto his plate while everyone else ate the ribeye and asparagus.  
  
  
L who was like a poster child for impulsive, slightly insane self indulgence. Self-denial, like never seeing Kira again if he was determined to do so, seemed unlikely.  
  
  
And so it seemed likely now: That if L could not keep Light from being bound; he’d wind up in Mu.  
  
  
Matt’s tobacco piece fell out his mouth onto the floor because his jaw had been dropped for that long. Mello growled, “Those hypocritical bastards.”  
  
  
Matt sat down at his computer, uninvited, “Right. Let’s help you.”  
  
  
Mello ate the rest of his chocolate bar before leaning over Matt to observe the information on the computer he’d already broken into, “I guess if you're going to die either way may as well bring the bastard back here so I can kill him myself.”  
  
  
L sighed, having now unwillingly enlisted a questionable support team for his operation. He’d get his locks rekeyed but he had a feeling these boys could pick them.

* * *

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Light has memorized the movements of his broken watch. He plans his days around it. Sometimes he fits in an extracurricular activity...
> 
> "I know what it's like to behold and not be held  
> Funny how a stomach unfed  
> Seems satisfied 'cause it's swell and swollen" Plastic  
>   
>   
>   
> (Requires editing and content clarification but some of y'all have been in pain so I'm posting it in brain poop form.)

The first few days after Ryuk left had been pure unremitting torture. Justin lived in strange estates in the center of a red desert made of delicate strips of wrought metal. Winding staircases meeting haphazardly around the property all spilling out into an open-air courtyard at the center in which Justin's throne of piles of bones sits at the center The buildings connect with bridges to libraries and rooms of artifacts stolen from different mortal worlds.   
  
Now was the hottest part of the summer, the suns of the realm sucked the moisture out of the air, and Light sat inside the room he’d been shown to on the first day he came, fanning himself ceaselessly and longing for his subterrainian home under the shade of his plants.  
  
He’d taken his third shower of the day when Justin Armonia barged into his room without announcing himself.  
  
“Stop using the water child. We don’t have an endless supply of it.”  
  
Light spoke to him in shinigami, “Hot here.”  
  
“Don’t… shinigami…fool…” Justin spoke five sentences to him quickly.  
  
Light could barely understand him at all.  
  
“That’s what I thought. Don’t you dare speak to me in a language you haven’t learned; it’s an insult to my intelligence.”  
  
“I’d like to learn it.” Light said. “You have books on it here right? Would you bring me some?” He’d read them in his room and wait for the summer heat to lessen. Big rains always came after the height of the heat. He doubt his master gave him over to Justin Armonia’s care to come back to find him burnt to death from walking down uneven poker hot metal staircases or melted into a useless puddle of sweat.  
  
“Ryuk paid me to keep you safe and fed. He didn’t pay me to give you my books.” Justin’s hands make the sound of well oiled machinery as he fluidly moves one in an arc to convey his displeasure.  
  
Light can’t help himself, he takes a page from his master, “Alright I guess you can just leave me to laze around in bed then.”  
  
“I could do that. It’s complicated though…”  
  
“It’s what?”  
  
“It’s… Not that you are powerful. However, nothing like you has ever existed to my knowledge. That’s rare for me, you see. I always understand the nature of something immediately.”  
  
“Didn’t seem like that to me.” Light snipes then feels wary, just because this isn’t Ryuk doesn’t mean the creature doesn’t have a temper.  
  
The worry passes when all that greets Light’s having called him out for impropriety is an impassive skull face, unreadable jewels for eyes.  
  
“Ryuk hasn’t told you anything about shinigami at all has he?”  
  
“My master says answers about the other shinigami will hurt me.”  
  
“That they would. They’d tear into you. Keep your pretty eyes as souvenirs and braid your lustrous hair into the ropes for their leather pouches after scalping you.”  
  
“So I did… have to hide. He’s keeping me safe.”  
  
“Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Ryuk has his good points. His raw magical prowess, his insatiable curiosity, his potential… son of who he is, I’ll give him that, but he is not infallible. Dropping you off on my door step broken and barely breathing makes me think he is also _no protector_.”  
  
“My master didn’t want to bring me here… but I made him lose his temper.”  
  
“Can you stop calling him that? He’s not here to appreciate the sound of you saying it anymore. Genuinely, I find it _obnoxious_.”  
  
“Why would I call him something other than what he is to me?”  
  
“Because, Light Yagami, I can’t hardly hope to teach you anything if you spend your time here simpering for lack of him.”  
  
“The cost of looking at your books is calling my master by his given name?”  
  
“I didn’t say anything about using my library.”  
  
Light finds himself scowling at the stubborn old bag of bones. Wearing a visage so cynical his master wouldn’t have hesitated to slap it right off his face. Somehow he feels braver here.  
  
“Thus he keeps you hidden because you are the weakest amongst us, but he’s so lazy about how he keeps you alive. He has you write down names from pictures he draws? He has you eat food he brings you? Reprehensible of him. Irresponsible. Look at you, you barely have any years to your name.”  
  
“I have plenty.” Light says feeling defensive. It works. Why does Justin sound like these are all stupid ideas?  
  
Justin made a disappointed heaving full-bodied sighn. “He’d asked I wait for him to return and you would use upon his return.”  
  
“Then I will wait to use it.”  
  
“No you will use it today like a proper shinigami. You’ll die in that waiting. The years you’ve taken can’t possibly last you. A mortal year accounts for a mere day here”  
  
Light, with this new knowledge, adds up the years he’s taken from the pictures of mortals Ryuk made for him. “Then I have a year and a little over three months before I need to use my note again. Plenty of time.”  
  
“That’s nothing at all. But how did you calculate it.”

  
“It's just arithmetic. I’ve claimed 475 mortal years. He will be gone _that_ long?”

 

“The task he is undertaking to help you is not a simple one. Unless he gives up, lazy as he is.”  
  
“He is not lazy. He wouldn’t have left me here with you if he couldn’t do it.” Light hates the way Beyondorsmason keeps talking about his master like the other shinigami disappoints him so much. It makes him uncomfortable.  
  
Justin chatters the teeth in his skull, “Impressive. You can recall the span of every mortal life you’ve taken and its length? Most of us don’t bother with that level of detail, or we can’t.”  
  
“Why? Don’t you keep track?”  
  
Beyondormason pauses, “Of course I don’t.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“I have my reasons.”  
  
“Are all shinigami this unhelpful!?”  
  
“Call it _our culture_ to be.”  
  
“What do you think I should do while I wait for him?”  
  
“He told me you seem to enjoy your hobbies?”  
  
“What I enjoy is taking care of my garden and spending my time with Ryuk.”  
  
Justin’s response smacks of disbelief, “…You have a garden…”

  
“Yes!”  
  
“We’re shinigami. We end life. We don’t _garden_.”  
  
“Ryuk brought me some plants so I could grow apples. So I don’t care what other shinigami don’t do. Please.”  
  
“Very well then. I’ll move it here to you if you think it will help you pass the time.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“I ask that you allow me to examine you thoroughly beforehand though. I’ll test your natural skills and look at you more closely.It may hurt you quite a bit but unlike your Ryuk I do not lack for ways to heal you.”  
  
“I think I can agree to that. For however long my mas-“

 

Justin coughs, sounding proper put out, “Ryuk.”  
  
“However long Ryuk is gone.”  
______________________________  
  
“We write. Mortals die. We extend our lifespan as their time flows into us. All mortal beings come to the same end. And Mu? Mu will take mortals and immortals alike.All is the same for all shinigami in this regard.” Justin makes a dramatic pause. Everything he says is nearly theatrical at this point and Light is trying not to laugh.  
  
The pause ends, the metal creature continues, “You are a shinigami. Though you are half-made and you will die easily; still, you should know all your kills first-hand. Understand them on sight and then you might begin to understand the scope of your power - a power as old as life itself; far older than the form you were born to.”  
  
  
  
Ryuk hasn’t lost the joy of the kill; he just doesn’t know how to share it with you. His priority was to keep you alive which is, I think, merely selfish. You are alive but you may as well be in Mu. A shinigami who doesn’t reap the souls they’ve especially chosen is unthinkable… you exist without purpose. Half-made _utterly_ directionless.”  
  
“Then you will show me how to kill this way?”  
  
“With pleasure.”  
  
“What do I have to do for you in return?”  
  
“I have told you. Sit still on the cot while I look at you.”  
  
Light gently quaked under Justin’s hard metal hands. Used to rough treatment as the start of day long indulgences; the very feeling of being touched sent his cock rigid so he had to spread his legs out slightly.  
  
“Hm. I see.”  
  
“You see what?” Blushing because he was being so lewd with this stranger.  
  
“The way you undulate under the barest touching… he asked me not to sleep with you but you’d let me wouldn’t you?”  
  
Light put his hand over Justin’s bone hand, “I’m sorry! I’m used to that kind of touch… meaning…”  
  
“Yes. He left you stinking of intimacy. Yet it’s not only how he’s trained you that makes me susceptible to your charms…” Justin slapped Light who had started to lean up towards him, the jewels in his hand cut his skin wide open. “It’s emanating from you. You are not _half-human_.” Those eyes glittered and a sparkle off of them became so blindingly bright that Light had to squint to keep looking at him, “The signature is weak still, the barest whiff of it though and I want to break my promises to him. But I won’t because of what you truly are.”  
  
Light held his cheek, streaked with red and feeling the blood bloom under his hand. “What do you mean?”  
  
Justin surprises him by holding out his wrist to Light’s mouth. “Bite here.”  
  
“I don’t think we should…” Light really wants to be filled and taken but the thought of Ryuk angry again.  
  
“I’m not coming onto you child, I’m testing a theory. Bite it.”  
  
Light bites him and the power surges into his open mouth in a torrent. He’d done this to Ryuk briefly but the feeling had been so much weaker. This is the fulfilling rush of taking life spans through reaping times 100. It’s luscious the way the energy fills his mouth and then radiates warmth through his body. The open wounds on his face seals up, he can feel them stitching back together. He wants more. He needs more. As Justin attempts to pull his wrist away he latches on harder until stars burst behind the whites of his eyes.  
  
Light feels the air itself swirl around him and unnatural upward gusts blow him away from Beyondormason to pin him to the ceiling of this laboratory.  
  
Justin hissed.“Experiment over. Do that again and I’ll have to tell Ryuk the other shinigami found you. You’ll be so unrecognizable to his eyes.”  
  
He floats Light down who cringes away from him because the golden skeleton is reaching for him. He pats Light’s healed face and seems to be marveling.  
  
“What was that?” Light asked.  
  
“You’re an _abomination_.”  
  
“I’m sorry.” He’s so scared that Beyondormason is going to end him here and now.  
  
“Stop quaking; it’s beneath you. Learn to steady yourself in the face of all fears. You are death. Never _show you fear_. You master it then embody it. I will still teach you to be a shinigami. I don’t know about teaching the other half.”  
  
“Wait you know what I am then?”  
  
“It doesn’t matter.”  
  
“Please I-  
  
“That part of you doesn’t matter. With me, and for Ryuk’s sake, you are a death god.”  


* * *

L had felt confident of his plan, if not his style, upon entering the metallic complex after his dimension shift that Naomi’s cloaking armor he’d secretly borrowed from her was concealing him. He entered through the drain for the dried out moat that the gnome team always used.  
  
  
He didn’t even need to roll out a map. He’d made a mental map of the premises in his head. The plan was almost full proof. He only needed to touch Light to dimension shift with him. He’d practiced it with Mello until it had become second nature. Just a touch to the heart and a few words with a destination in mind, and voila. They’d get to the touchstone Matt had created for them, located a remote part of the Elysian fields that were maybe surveyed once every few hundred years by the infantry.  
  
Run in. Run out. That was the only way to do this. Any contact with Justin Armonia would mean ‘instant KO’ as Mello was fond of saying. And yeah, probably the 'bad end' of the game.  
  
So far, so good. The sound of even his footfalls were silenced by the suit. It was Naomi’s so it was a leather catsuit to go with her sense of style. And almost too tight in the waist, too large at the chest, but the magic on it worked and that was all that mattered.  
  
  
Suddenly L can’t move,  cystal emerges from the ground and boxes him in on all sides. The broadsword is stuck in a wall that lifts it from his fist then grows around it.  
  
Then the part holding the sword melts to gel like consistency as Justin yanks it out then tosses it to Light who nearly crumbles trying to balance under its weight.  
  
  
“I haven’t seen that sword since Gabriel visited our realm. I’m certain it could not belong to you, a newborn archangel.”  
  
  
“If you’re going to snatch my years, Beyondormason. Do it now.”  
  
  
Light looks between them confused, “You two know one another?”  
  
  
“No.” They both bark, angry about the assumption they might be acquainted for entirely different reasons.  
  
“Light, this is an intruder on our lands.”  
  
“I met him before. He was dressed different but that's him. Same name. He made Ryuk awfully angry with me a few years back now.” Light fixed him with a cross look, “I didn’t give you permission to kiss my cheek but he never believed me. Maybe you can tell him now that you are here.”  
  
“Light, disengage with the angel, now. They are not our kind; they do not bear our interests in mind. Take this weapon to the sealed stone entombment in my armory at once. This one hardly deserves to wield it.” Light looks like he’d much rather stay and overhear the conversations about to take place, “I’m not asking you Light. I’m instructing you; that’s an exceedingly deadly holy weapon. And don’t hold it for too long. It forged by beings of light to weaken dark magic wielding demons. As soon as you’ve placed it away beyond the obsidian, wash yourself, write in your death note and chant to chaos for favor until I return.”  
  
“Claim your years, you say? Why would I do a reckless thing like murdering one of you; risking dealing with a whole tribunal of you later. That’s poor planning. I'm not a rash shinigami, L Lawliet. You need not fear death when it has no use for you.”  
  
“But it does. Heaven will only send for me to take me out if you do not kill me.”  
  
“Ah? Will they? Your fate is in our hands now; they should know the rules of our treaty well enough. Should they have forgotten though It’s been a long time since I’ve had good excuse to curse an entire group of beings. I’d been ignoring their little recognizance-gathering creatures. There is nothing I’d do in plain sight I wouldn’t mind for them to keep on record.”  
  
L went white remembering Justin’s file, “What will you do to me then?  
  
“Wait for a clear next step. Put you on pause, as it were.”  
  
“Wait for what?”  
  
“For what Light's master decides to do with you.”  
  
“Ryuk? So I was right. He is still around. Whatever he’s paying you to care for Light Yagami; I will pay you off. Quadruple it. Do not wait for that… that sick freak. If you like him even a little let him leave with me.”

 

“Fascinating. Tell me, where were you planning to take my student?” Justin held his hand out and his metal scythe materialized in his hand, he leaned against it inquisitively.   
  
Seraphim sing him to sleep he was truly doomed, “Back home. To the fields of Elysian. My small group found a robotic wing replacement for damaged cadets he can use to hide in plain sight amongst the one-winged angels.”  
  
“Inadvisable to say the least. Pray-tell what were you going to do about the thousands of wards on Valhalla district against demonic interference. More materially, how did you intend to conceal his fangs and claws.”  
  
“Those are nothing spectacularly cryptographic in nature; I can easily disable them. And, my protege has a knack for stage make-up.”  
  
“Of all the ridiculous, cockamamie ideas I’ve heard your kind speak of that is by far the most doomed plan I’ve had the distinct displeasure of being told.” Justin looked more than unamused, he tapped on the crystalline rainbow structure while he spoke with L, ““In summation, you’ve come here to take under  _your wing_  that which you cannot hope to understand, moreover cannot realistically protect or help. It is immediately apparent the halfling will die if I were to ever bequeath him to you, L Lawliet.”  
  
L felt rage seethe and boil within him. He was planning on taking Light away _from a rapist_. He concentrated on the calm deep inside himself and moved his wings within the crystal casing, beams of light shot from them and shattered the part of the cage keeping them still.  
  
Justin’s jewel eyes twinkled, vaguely impressed. He lifted it sharpest largest shard on the ground and directed it to float in the air before using it to clip L’s two largest wings.  
  
While L was screaming to have had his flight feathers clipped, Justin continued to speak as if annoyed with his pain, “Negotiations with a heavenly creature? You should know something fairly rudimentary, L. Shinigami only protect their own kind. Everything else and everyone else is fair game for destruction, for reaping. And, the one you seethe about, Ryuk?,”  
  
Justin whispered dangerously, “I know him as my impulsive brother-in-arms; his disposition to take other people’s…  _things, I know how you view the boy,_  is common among our kind. And this young one,’  
  
Justin opened a mini portal where Light could be observed entering a black geode filled cavern where rows upon rows of multi-colored scythes sat perched over metal frames, “Is my student. Who will continue under my care and tutelage in these estates. His promise to our kind is enormous. His future is not to be found at the unwelcoming pearly gates.”  
  
Then as if to really twist the knife, he continued, “Tell you what you might find surprising though.” Justin said, changing the scene in the portal to something in the past, projecting it from his mind.  
  
“Light, do you miss Ryuk?”  
  
Light tilted his head angelically, “My master? Terribly. Do you know if is he coming home soon?”  
  
“I can’t say.” Justin admitted.  
  
“I want to show him the scythe you gave me. He’ll love it. He has all these weapons, and I was never good enough to use them, but you’ve taught me well.”  
  
“You will one day.”  
  
“It can’t come soon enough.”  
  
L hated this, more than the cage, more than the fact his eloquently simple plan to rescue Light had failed, almost immediately, “He doesn't know what he's saying, he's been brainwashed. BECAUSE HE DOESN’T KNOW WHO HE IS!”  
  
“My, my, all that passion and nothing to be done about it… can’t even admit you are wrong that you need to save him from something.” Justin closed the portal, having gotten what he’d wanted, having made his point, “Archangels are rarely so rowdy. I’d say Light knows who he is quite well. Something to think about, L Lawliet. The passage of time rebuilds us all anew, especially those of us who were born again.”  
  
The top half of the cage melted until his face was exposed. Sensing that he was reopen to an area where magic could be worked, he started to speak the runes for dimension shift, as a  pentagram appeared in floating ink in front of his face, by the time he got to, ‘hallowed’ his tongue fell dumb and useless within his mouth. Cold and hard and thick. He reached to his own face in horror and touched the hard surface below his soft palette.  
  
Justin had turned L’s tongue to stone.  
  
He looked at him in horrification. The crystalline structure widened into a miniature room around him and a bench formed from the side. It cut off all magical current. It blocked the very air. The only reason L would survive this would be his immortality. With the atmosphere cut off he’d soon pass out.  
  
He thought of Matt and Mello, now waiting for him at the rendezvous point with Light’s costume wing. He imagined their despairing faces when they realized he wasn’t coming back and sat down and placed his head in his hands. He wondered what they would tell Naomi when she came calling for him when he didn’t show to work on Monday.  
  
“Go ahead. Take a seat. Make yourself  _un_ comfortable. Ryuk will decide what to do with you. How many more years he’ll be away, I can’t say. Count yourself very lucky. Were you not part of both my brother’s stories, I’d have already pressurized your skinny body for its carbon. Archangel remains can make for alluring diamonds.” 

* * *

  
Time had passed. Light learned to deal with Justin mostly. 

Light looked down at the watch on his wrist which didn’t really do anything useful but it was very beautiful.  
  
  
He’d once asked his master why he had it. Ryuk had said, “Tch. That was a gift from someone who is in Mu now. Better that we don’t speak of them now.” So often his style of response. But it was nice to even know... it had been a gift.  
  
  
The piece had words on it he could read, “Omega Speedmaster II: Moon Watch”  
  
  
He inspected it for the millionth time. Whoever gave it to him had know his name meant ‘moon’.  
  
  
Living in Justin's open aired complex, h e’d learned that moons in the shinigami realm were very important. The night sky had seven moons. He learned to tell the time at night by looking up at them. In the day he studied the shadows cast by the copper and silver formations around Justin's arena onto the ground.  
  
  
He’d learn to know when the bite of winter or the blaze of summer was upon them by the cast of the moon's color at night. No, he’d never been able to look at the sky when his master was protecting him. But Justin Armonia’s power was so fearsome that no one entered his domain without sending a message to seek permission first.  
  
Since Light had come Justin had refused all visitors. Explaining to Light that Ryuk's fears about his safety should he meet up most shingami were valid. That an elder shinigami would tear him limb from limb in ritual and move rank by consuming his heart. Though Justin scoffed that they would at most move up slightly, maybe half a rank. Weakling he’d been born.  
  
Justin Armonia explained to him he knew nothing of his past and that whatever he and Ryuk had gotten up to before they’d met had been of no interest to him and that they hadn’t been important enough to enter into history books. Though the golden shinigami seemed to have some disdain for his master; he had shown none towards Light. And also nothing but complete respect for their relationship.  
  
  
Slowly he’d gone from cold and pedantic to friendly… and pedantic as he realized his prized library was also loved by Light. And that Light treated his books and artifacts with great care. So much so did he warm to him that when when Light had explained his garden had been left behind and he was worried for the living creatures he’d been taking care of inside it; Justin had shocked him by setting up a portal where he could simply slip into his old home and come back. He’d go and tend to his garden. Eat the apples and figs that were now growing there. Greet his spiders one of whom had gotten so big that it was now the size of Light’s palm. Unlike Ryuk, Justin answered questions clearly or admitted he did not know the answer. Though Light didn’t ask too much of him at first but at some point realize that nothing was off-limits; it was just that Justin wasn’t privy to the kinds of information  
  
Light most wanted to know. Who it was, exactly, that he had once been.  
  
  
Or what kind of shinigami he was. Justin would say half-breed at first but watching Light work, learn magic and basic proficiency of defending himself... Justin had now defaulted to, 'Absolutely no idea.'  
  
  
Light fingered the face of the watch again. The long stick near the crescent moon about to shudder backwards again and the tiny one would spin forward for a bit like it did every day. 4 of the moons would have left the night sky by now. Nearing the dawning of the overwhelming orange sun that's brightness would be obscured by the movement of the ominous shelf clouds that rose from the dead oceans in the morning and moved as breakneck speed across the sky of the land.  
  
Justin would be in his sanctum chanting to chaos at this hour, blocked off to everything, soaking in dark energy and offering any extraneous years collected from mortals in sacrifice. He felt conflicted and scared about what he was about to do.Justin would be expecting him to greet him for today’s lessons in a couple hours, in the mezzanine.He closed his eyes. He remembered the last time he’d badly angered one of his elders and found out the horrors they were capable of. Justin seemed to have a quiet anger in him. He strode up to the cage with concealatory magic. aid down on the floor next to L’s cage  
  
-Hey- He tried, -Can you understand this? I can't risk Justin hearing me speak to you.-  
  
The angel who looked at him weakly from where he was curled onto the cool stone floor. He nodded yes. The pentagram only allowed for two way communication if he’d been able to paint in on L as well. As it was the magic would only work if he was near another being who would look him in the eyes as he used it.  
  
-You'd looked better in those loose white robes.-  
  
He first joked about L’s odd ill-fitting attire. But close to it now he could see sigils pressed into the black leather. The outfit had had a function.L laughed weakly and mouthed at him in exaggeration, which sent a little thrill through him, 'I know.'  
  
-I warned you last time I saw you. My master said this realm is dangerous: unforgiving and cruel.-  
  
L rolled his eyes like ‘no shit.’ as he tried to to tell him what else Ryuk had warned about the shingami realm he could feel himself connecting to nothing. Just the feeling of loud thoughts in his mind.  
  
  
When he caught the man’s eyes again he told him, -Magic for this communication is fairly unless you concentrate directly on my eyes.” L did again.  
  
  
Chaos, those huge eyes were the color of the clouds at dusk as they settled back upon the black ocean, the glitter ones he could only see from the top level of the library, “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I asked you back then to come back. We have to get you out of here. I wanted you to come back only because I didn’t know what would happen if you did..-  
  
  
L looked at him expectantly  
  
  
-My relationship suffered after you came. He beat me. He humiliated me. I serve, he guard and I violated our pact that day. Thinking I’d go with you… I deserved the punishment… I faltered… I’d never met anyone like you… I’m sorry. But I promise, I’ll figure out how to set you free. I cannot follow you anywhere. You said you’d return when you knew how to take me away. But I didn’t understand myself as well as I do now. It’s been a long time you know-  
  
  
L made a hideous face of disgust at his rambling. He made an X shape with his arms like, ‘No’, cupped his ear as a gesture for Light to 'listen' then pointed for Light to pay attention to the glass of the cage.  
  
  
Slowly he wrote in the unmistakeable strokes of the shinigami runes, etching out a curled O shape with a strike through it next to a run that looked like two sloping hills, “Y O U A R E,”Light followed, -I am?-

L wrote faster now, “N O T  A  B E L O N G I N G.” The rune for belonging being a twisted symbol. For lines held together in a knot.

Light felt choked up. An foreign longing gripped him. He put his hand to the clearest part of the crystal and the angel responded by putting his own up. He couldn’t feel the touch but when he realized how badly he wanted to, imagined it might make him happy; he drew his hand away as if singed.  
  
  
-That’s not true.- He was Ryuk’s. Ryuk was also his. Though his memory didn’t stretch back before he had gotten his fangs; he remembered that looking at Ryuk after he was reborn had eased him. He remembered the feeling of familiarity and, looking back now, the feeling that Ryuk was somehow his.

The captives huge eyes stared at him with a deadening conviction and he mouthed, “You are not his. I love you.”And Light jumped up and backed away from the prisoner. Right up into Justin Armonia.

* * *

“Light’s curiosity really exists without end.” Justin surmised, gripping his shoulder and radiating dark energy that Light could feel snake around him; drainingly.  
  
  
Light fell to his knees and bowed, cowering; fear coursed through him like a raging river. He had seen only small hints of what Justin was capable of and angering him was like a one-way ticket to Mu, “Mentor. I only wanted to see him up close. I-“  
  
  
“Hush now, Light, I merely thought you were an intruder. You were giving of these foreign chaotic signatures.” The magic died down. Justin reached down and pulled the collar of his neck down. “My word. This pentagram contains telepathy magic. When did you read those books? I didn’t give them to you to study... with good reason.”  
  
  
“I would never look at any book of yours without permission, Justin. I memorized this from one of the set of books in Ryuk’s repository.  
  
  
“How? He'd promised me he sealed his collections room with wards right before he left with you. He safe keeps some of the best arms in the land. And when you were brought to me your knowledge of our language was woefully incomplete. Did you break in?”  
  
  
“No. I couldn’t read the pages back then, I couldn’t at all, but I looked at them often, and when we started to study the language and then the chaotic runes together everything clicked into place.”  
  
  
Justin mused, “Brilliant. So, Ryuk keeps tomes on chaos magic well above his rank.  And you are an amnesiac with a photographic memory. I'd never taken him for an aspirational sort. To wit,  I’ve never even seen him chant for chaos but through you I’m learning more about him all the time. He must have found favor... to meet you. Well. This is much above your rank as well young one. Keep the pentagram on naked skin much longer and it will start eat through your skin to the bone. I own no potion that cures wounds from misused chaotic dark magic.”  
  
  
Focused on it now, Light did feel a fierce itching.  
  
  
“You’re not mad at me?” Light asked him confused and held his hands together to keep from scratching with his ruby talons.  
  
  
“I’ll think about how to respond to this. I’m not… pleased with you. I’m mostly amazed our archangel prisoner isn’t in stasis yet. Now go scrub that off and join me in the study so I can mitigate its effects.”  
  
  
“If you aren’t angry… why don’t you just let him go? Because you see it’s my fault he’s here. I’ll do whatever I need to make up for this misunderstanding. Let’s just send him back. I’ll tell Ryuk I set him straight. I told him I would never go with him. I-”Justin summoned his staff and bobbed him on the head with it, “Send him back? So that he can come back for you later; maybe some year in the future when I am not around to guard you? Or with a weapon I do not recognize and know how to nullify? Do you want to go to Mu so badly, my apprentice?”  
  
  
“… No.” Light said. He hadn't even shown Ryuk how smooth he was with the scythe now. He wasn't looking to move into nothing.  
  
  
“This idiot in here… he’s not like Ryuk. He isn’t misguided with your best interests in mind. It’s more harmful than that. His plan would have killed you. You must learn this well. Angels are not friends to demons.”  
  
  
Kill him? The angel in there wanted to kill him? Then again, it had felt intense and... wrong when he'd mouthed such emotional words to Light.  
  
As if Light's heart might explode in his chest. Yet even if that were true, that the angel was here to trick him into some action that would kill him, Light felt that only mortals were meant for death. Immortality was earned and should be respected, treasured. L should go back then maybe centuries from now they'd face in some epic battle between the heavens and hells, the history book that Justin gave him asserted that this repeated in cycles,  “He had once said he used to know me. He must be confused. He-“  
  
  
“Light. Go wash off the chaotic pentagram. That angel will enter stasis… stubbornly… but soon. Then I need not worry about this kind of dalliance from you again. And let's learn the basic summoning magic before we reach for the high ranked magicks, yes?”  
  
Light looked sadly back at L Lawliet as they walked away. The man had moved to lying flat on his back and breathing shallowly.   
  
  
He closed his eyes tight and looked forward. But soft lips mouthing 'I love you' had burned into his brain.

**Author's Note:**

> Won't you join me in RyuRaito hell? It burns and we should all be ashamed to be here. ;-) Not really. I'm not anyway.
> 
> *lights my cigarette on the flames of this splendid garbage*
> 
> I love them. I'm not so attached to them I won't split them up though. Ryuk has not been good to Light.
> 
> Comment if you liked or disliked something and want to read my rants or tangential thoughts about it at some later, undetermined date. I reorganized the chapters so that they are sequential now.
> 
> Kudos or stealth kudos me if you liked it.


End file.
